Title: The Tank: Chapter Four, Part One
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Chapter Four, Part
One
For the first time in months, the campus was quiet. The
university had officially let out for the year, and while there would always be
some people about—the staff that maintained the facilities, certain teachers
and students who had experiments that couldn’t be put on hold for holiday, and
the occasional tourist—the bustling crowds of dark-robed students were by-in-large
gone now.
Anton, by all rights, should have been one of them, new
graduate that he was. At the very least, he should have been in the process of
packing his laboratory, settling his paperwork, and moving on to a new and
exciting position back out in the world. The last, of course, hadn’t happened,
and because it hadn’t happened none of the rest of it was until he absolutely
couldn’t put it off any longer.
He wouldn’t have squatted on campus, of course. Anton
had his pride, after all—he would never have pushed his welcome so far that he
was forced out. But if he’d had to be reminded more than once, well, he
was absent-minded at times, wasn’t he? It was a caveat of the trade—thaumaturges
tended to focus so deeply on their work that much of the rest of life passed
them by, often including the need to sleep and eat. It was a bit of a miracle
that Anton’s parents had ever found each other, given how many thaumaturgical
miracles his father had wrought and how much bloody time they’d all
taken.
Besides, Anton now had an actual, official reason to stay here—at
least until he was called in to meet with Dr. Grable. He’d received a message
from the man’s secretary not an hour ago, requesting his presence at four. That
was right after Grable was scheduled to meet with the emperor’s delegation,
according to a passing comment by Camille that morning.
That morning…mmm, that had been nice. Camille had gone out
early, and returned not long after with hot chocolate, ham and gruyere
croissants, and just in case Anton couldn’t cope without it, a little cup of
espresso as well.
“You are a god among men,” Anton had slurred from where he
still lay in bed, his arms wrapped around Camille’s pillow.
“I hope not,” Camille had said, gently setting the tray of
food down before joining Anton on the bed again. He didn’t lay down, just sat
across from Anton’s head and smoothed a hand across his shoulder and upper
back. “There’s too much expected of gods, and I have more than enough people to
worry about as it is.”
Anton craned his head around until he could kiss Camille’s
palm. “I wish you didn’t worry about me.” He knew better than to suggest that
Camille didn’t ever need to worry about him—last night had made the
opposite abundantly clear.
“You wouldn’t be yourself if you didn’t occasionally become
involved in things that normal men shy away from.”
“I am normal,” Anton had protested sleepily.
“No,” Camille had replied with a faint smile. “You’re really
not.”
Anton stopped and stood in front of his laboratory’s window.
It was late May, the height of spring now arcing toward summer, and the
temperature outside was as lovely as Zürich could possibly be. There was no
logical reason for him to keep the window closed. None of his experiments were
so sensitive that they would be disrupted by a bit of breeze or a few
raindrops, and that was all the weather had offered up lately beyond pure
sunshine.
In truth, the laboratory could have used some airing
out, after the last round of experiments involving powdered sulfur. That was
what a normal man in this situation would do, and Anton was still of the
opinion, despite Camille’s easy teasing, that he was quite normal.
None of this logic had much of an impact on Anton’s peace of
mind, though.
He touched the stone sill beneath the window, cool and
dark, shaped long ago by a stonemason’s chisel and worn a bit more by the hands
of dozens, scores of students that had done their work here. It had a bit of a
shine to it, this stone. Humanity had literally pressed its grease into the cutter’s
marks until the surface was nearly smooth. Once, Anton wouldn’t have hesitated
to lean his weight there, to throw open the window and stare down at the square
far below with nothing more than a bit of bemusement. Now the thought of it
made him shudder.
Oh, get a hold of yourself, he thought irritably. You’re
not a child. There’s no need to let the past rule you like this. He was
lucky he hadn’t had a nightmare last night—he would have hated to wake Camille
up with his shouting.
Sometimes—rarely—hardly more than once a week—Anton relived
the sensation of being pushed from this window. In those dreams, unlike in real
life, he didn’t catch himself on a bit of gothic ornamentation as he fell, and
Camille didn’t haul him back into his laboratory at the last second. In the
dreams he fell straight to the cobblestones and dashed his brains out, yet somehow
lived to see his own disfigured corpse despite that. Or Camille found him, but
their hands slipped apart. The worse ones were the ones where Camille saw him,
but never bothered to reach for him at all, and Anton had to see his lover’s
indifferent face as he fell to his non-death and wonder what he had done wrong.
They were wrenching, but they were just dreams. “Just
dreams,” he told himself. “Now get a move on.”
It made sense to at least start packing now,
especially if Camille was right and Dr. Grable was going to offer Anton a place
as his assistant for the summer. In Paris, nonetheless. Paris! Anton had
always wanted to go to Paris. Some of the greatest technological innovations of
the nineteenth century had been made there, courtesy of L’Institut D’Ingénierie
Technologique. The Institute was to the development of machinery what
Oxford was to British thaumaturgy—simply the best of the best. Anton was
greatly looking forward to visiting it, if he got the chance.
Which he certainly wouldn’t get if he couldn’t even pack
up his bloody laboratory. Anton began with his notebooks, organizing and
triaging the most important ones versus those that could be left in his—safe and
securely spelled—trunk for the time being. He needed to keep his greatest works
at hand, of course, just in case. Just in case you’re offered a job down
there, perhaps, and Caroline sees it and goes into conniptions and tattles on
you to the Council and your citizenship is revoked and you never see your
mother again.
No. Caroline wouldn’t do that to him. She would hurt him,
verbally and emotionally, deliberately and not, but she would never do
something to put him in physical danger and she would certainly never cause any
harm to his mother. Caroline was like a daughter to her.
Get on with it.
Anton packed up his most specific and irreplaceable spell
components next, things that he needed for his masterpieces or that were less
essential, but that he doubted he’d be able to afford if he had to repurchase
them. Next came the spell housings—little balls like the one he’d deployed
yesterday, carved from resinous pine and balsam, light and easily lit. Lastly
he added in a few basic alembics and firestarters, in case he had to make
things on the go.
“That’s all the important stuff,” he murmured. Except…it
really wasn’t. There was still the palimpsest.
It was a copy of the palimpsest, actually, one Anton had
made before the original was stolen. He’d very nearly decoded it and he wanted
to finish the job, even though it seemed like a waste of time now that the
spell was out there in the world. Wasn’t it? Even if it was, there was no excuse
for leaving something like that where any old thaumaturge could discover it.
Anton reached beneath his long wooden desk, brushing a few
spiders out of the way as he felt around for—ah. The false panel he’d wedged in
place fell out, and the copy of the palimpsest dropped into his hand. There. He
pulled it out, brushed it off, and tucked it into his holdall. Now he
was ready.
The bell tower chimed quarter to four. Anton put on his
jacket and hat, straightened his tie, and headed for the stairs.
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