Sword and Pen by Rachel Caine

Author:Rachel Caine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-09-02T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

THOMAS

“No, not like that,” Thomas said, and elbowed the Artifex Magnus aside. He was sweating, stripped of his jacket, and he hardly recognized that he’d just shoved a member of the Great Library’s Curia out of the way until it was far too late. “Sorry,” he mumbled, but not with any real regret. “We have little time.”

“Yes, I know that, son,” Artifex Greta Jones said. She was American, which was a curiosity in and of itself—a round, pleasant woman with more than enough talent at engineering for nearly any task set before her. A rich, slow accent like melting butter. “Easy, now. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.”

There was no time to be polite, or easy. Thomas knew she was wrong. That wasn’t modest, but it was true. He quickly unscrewed the bolts holding the gigantic crystal in place and gently lowered it to the worktable nearby. Everything looked fine, but he could read from the power consumption curve that it was not fine at all. “It’s not performing as expected,” he said as he unbolted the platinum casing that held the crystal. “The power cycle should have been longer, and recovery shorter. There’s something—”

As soon as the casing was off, he saw it, and his heart sank. Something had been off in the measurements, just the tiniest bit, and the distribution of stress must have thrown the calculations off and caused vibration. Vibration had caused a flaw.

The crystal was useless. The crack within it was tiny, a speck that would have been meaningless for any other purpose . . . but not this one. It could be recut and the flaw eliminated, but he’d custom built the casing for this stone to exacting specifications. That had been shortsighted.

The Artifex looked at the crystal, and he could tell she saw what he did. “It’ll crack straight through the next time we use it,” she said. “You were right. I’m sorry I doubted you. We could recut it, but that will reduce power . . .”

“It will,” he confirmed. “I’ll have the jewelers cut more crystals while I make a different kind of casing. One that can adjust to different crystal dimensions, in case we must change them more frequently. Put this one back, reduce the power output, and pray that they don’t force us to use it again more than once before the replacement is ready.” The Lighthouse Ray was, in effect, a giant bluff, a gamble that he and the Artifex had decided was worth the risk when they embarked on it. Now it had become more threat than reality.

“I’m concerned that should the crystal shatter, the power released could destroy this chamber and even the top few floors of the Lighthouse,” Artifex Jones said. “Look.” She took out a tablet and quickly scratched out equations, a dense forest of variables and calculations that were impressive even by Thomas’s standards. She finished and held it out, and as he took it and mentally recalculated, he nodded. She was right.

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