Alex and Caleb set out into the forest with Chorus carts to bring back as many of the remaining fire sprites as they could, and Mallory set to work repairing the old fire sprite she and Caleb had already collected as soon as she got back to the workshop. She bit her lip, studied the diagrams in the book, and then looked over the fire sprite, mentally labeling each part she found that corresponded with the diagram in the book. While the hulking exteriors of the fire sprites had no equivalent in the city, the innards of the ancient dark-forest sprites were surprisingly made of nearly identical parts as those listed in Birthing Sprites—the very parts that Caleb had filled her workshop with could form the base of either a culture sprite to water plants, or a defensive fire sprite.
When Alex had said that her grandfather had worked with the heirs to the Sprite Master and the Smith guild so that they could gather materials and make the parts needed, Mallory had worried that she might need specialized parts that were unavailable—but so far, it seemed that the only component that was forged from scratch would have been the shell—and those they had in spades, even if they were somewhat rusted from years of exposure in the forest. The size of the fire sprite was a bit challenging as well: At twelve-feet tall fully extended, they would have been too tall to stand in the shed, but Mallory found that the legs were triple-jointed so that they could fold over themselves. Once folded, she could lower the sprite down to about seven-feet tall, which was low enough to work on the topmost parts with just a small stool to provide a boost.
As she studied the book, Mallory found it amusing that over the hundreds of years that separated the history of the city erecting the light, the printing of the book, and the current birthing of the city sprites, nothing about the make-up of a sprite had changed. The parts were just assembled in a different order, depending on the function of the sprite, but there was some aesthetic variation in the inner parts, if not the design.
As she scrubbed and oiled down the rust, she noticed that the ancient sprites had strange markings stamped into them that were different than the ones marking the city’s sprite parts. The marking looked like a crescent moon inside a large star and four smaller stars that were symmetrical to the curve of the moon, whereas the familiar city marking used the shape of a heater shield with a solid W-shaped top and stripes at the pointed bottom. Mallory knew that the symbols were probably family crests because of the portraits of the line of Administrators in Alex’s grandfather’s house. The earliest Administrators in the portraits were wearing family crests, but that practice had been discarded generations ago as the families of the city mixed, and lineage became cloudy. Since that practice was no longer used in the houses of the Triad, she found it intriguing that Reddy LaMarr was still using a family crest on new sprites as the current Sprite Master—and even more interesting that these older symbols suggested Reddy’s family may not have always been Sprite Masters. She wondered to which of the city’s families this ancient crest belonged. Knowing that Reddy LaMarr was not a direct descendant of the oldest guild families in the city made Mallory feel joyful despite her station now.
While she worked, she began to whistle old hymns her parents had sung when she was small. When Mallory was nearly three-quarters of the way through repairing the sprite, she took a break and went inside to grab a bite to eat. She scrubbed her greasy hands in the sink with soap and water and marveled at how long it took to get the grease off. She never could quite get it out from under her fingernails. She grabbed a plate and cut off a hunk of bread and then grabbed an apple.
While she chewed her food, she thought about the work she had completed so far. If the book was accurate—even with what she had managed so far—she was pretty sure the Dikaió command in the book could birth the sprite into working order. The most interesting part was the way the fire sprite ignited its stream of fuel. The sound of metal scraping on metal that their grandparents had told them about was made by two large metal discs inside the sprite with a layer of rough coating on them. One would spin one way, and the other would spin opposite, and the rough coating of the discs grinding against each other created sparks. The propulsion system for the fuel operated almost exactly like the hydrant sprites, and Mallory wished she had been able to read the book when Caleb had asked for ideas about redirecting the water; seeing how the sprites worked would have made that a much easier task. Perhaps when this business with the Administrator and the magistrates was finished, she could return to that problem. As far as the fire sprite went, she figured the remaining work was mostly cosmetic, patching up the rusted holes in the shell. She was sure that she could finish the next one even faster; they really were not that hard to put together.
“Mallory?” Caleb’s voice called into the house.
She swallowed a hunk of apple before she had fully chewed it, and it moved slowly and painfully down her esophagus. There was a moment when she was worried it would not go down all the way, and she grabbed her glass of water to wash it along, which sent her into a fit of sputtering. Finally, the apple cleared, and she yelled back, “I’m in the kitchen, having a bite to eat.”
Alex and Caleb came in dirty, covered with sweat, and smelling of manual labor. “You have food?” Caleb asked. “Is it okay if we have some?”
Mallory waved toward the nearly bare pantry. “Tomorrow’s market day. We should finish off what’s there, so it doesn’t go bad. Help yourselves.” The pair accepted her invitation. Alex pulled off her long gloves to wash her hands, and Caleb started to open the pantry.
“Ahem,” Mallory huffed.
Caleb turned, confused, and Mallory pointed toward Alex. “We may be going through hard times Caleb Aiworth, but we’re not riffraff. Wash your hands, please.”
Caleb laughed heartily. “You do a great impression of my mother, Mallory Knenne.”
Alex laughed at them both and moved over so Caleb could get in and wash his hands too, but she moved quickly to pull her glove over her scarred hand before the others could see it. Then they rummaged in the pantry looking for something to eat. Alex came back with an over-ripe pear and some crackers. Caleb found some dried bananas, the rest of the bread, and a bottle of honey. He proceeded to pour honey over the bread and nibble at it, savoring every crumb. Mallory laughed. “Not long ago, Caleb would have eaten that loaf in two bites.”
Caleb looked up, licking the honey on his lips like a bear after dipping into a beehive. “Not long ago, there were six loaves three times the size of this one in your pantry.”
Mallory’s mirth faded. “I think I’ve got the fire sprite ready except for a few minor cosmetic issues.”
Alex’s eyebrows raised. “Already?” she asked before nibbling a bit of cracker.
“Yeah, sprites are not that complicated once you see how they fit together—well, at least not mechanically anyway. The parts that the Dikaió controls are hard to understand, though. They’re like these tiny boxes with tendrils that plug into different parts.” Mallory made tendrils by squiggling her fingers on one hand. She used her other hand to make a fist then plugged one of her finger tendrils into the hole created by her thumb and forefinger. She looked up at Caleb. “Do you think the Sprite Master would know much about them?”
Caleb shrugged. “I doubt it. She told me she just says the words to birth the sprites. The Dikaió of the Rookery does all the work assembling them. Why do you think I came to you for help with the hydrant sprites?”
Mallory blushed but shot back, “So, even in fixing problems, I’m your second choice.”
Caleb smiled, his lips covered with honey again, “First, second, you’re the only one who actually seems to be able to do anything without the Dikaió, so that makes you number one in the city, right?”
Alex huffed, “Well, my grandfather seems to be doing alright without the Dikaió, which is why we’re here, right?”
Caleb licked his lips some more. “Right! I think we’ve got a whole other fire sprite in our carts, Mal. The process is moving a lot faster now that we’ve done one, and I know how to pull them apart.”
“And?” Alex prodded.
“And . . . Alex had the idea of pulling the parts out, loading the hull, and then piling the parts back into the hull. The load is a lot harder to push, a lot harder,” Caleb whined rubbing the muscles of his arm, “but we managed a whole sprite in one trip instead of two. I think we can get another one back here before dusk if we hurry.”
Mallory’s head spun. “I don’t know why, but I thought putting these together would have taken us days, if not weeks.”
Alex shrugged, “It’s just as well. We have that long before my grandfather takes action.”
“How long do we have?” Mallory asked.
Caleb stood up and began to pace. “The City Council is meeting this morning at my house. My father has been using our entryway as a temporary City Hall until they can find a more permanent location.”
Alex chimed in, “We think my grandfather will say something there that will put his plan into motion.”
“What do you think he’ll say?” Mallory bit her lip, wondering if she really wanted to know the answer.
Caleb and Alex looked at each other and shrugged. Caleb mused, “Probably something about the Matriarchy being unnecessary, you needing justice—who knows? Maybe he’ll call for the immediate surrender of the city.”
Alex stood up and shoved the last bit of cracker into her mouth. The dryness of the cracker made her cough, and she stammered, “Whatever it is, we should go get what we can and let Mallory get back to work. We want to be ready for him, not trying to play catch up.”
The three parted ways with fresh focus, and Mallory walked quickly back to her workshop. She grabbed hold of the handle and yanked. Sharp pain spread up her tricep and shoulder as her arm moved, but the door was stuck again. She pulled hard again at a different angle. Still no luck. She stepped out from behind the hedge, hoping Caleb was still within shouting range, but she could see his and Alex’s forms disappearing down the hill pushing their Dikaió carts in diagonal zig-zags like Mallory had shown them. There was no way they would hear her call. Mallory huffed and walked back toward the door of the workshop. She planted her feet in line with her shoulders, bent her knees, and grabbed hold of the handle with both hands. Then, using her whole body, she pulled on the door.
With that technique, the workshop’s door swung open much easier than she thought it would, and she stumbled backward into the grass, which had grown longer than she ever remembered it being. She lay there for a moment looking up at the tall grass that had sprouted. Several gnats and mosquitos had been disturbed by her fall and were swarming above her in the warm afternoon air. Suddenly, several dragonflies entered the mix, darting this way and that, eating their way through the swarm. Mallory watched them in curious amazement. When the dragonflies were sitting still, their translucent wings were an intricate maze of windowpanes; in motion, their wings were just a blur, pounding the air to keep their living fuselage airborne. Mallory imagined what it would take to make a sprite that could fly like that. The book had some flying sprites in it, but they all hovered with propulsion units or propellors, but adding wings that could move like these dragonflies would add speed and height to the sprites’ movements. She added the thought to the mental list of things she’d like to explore after the business with the Administrator was finished.
Mallory dragged herself up out of the grass, brushing off bits of green blades and swatting happily feasting mosquitoes off her as she stood. Those bites were going to be annoyingly itchy later. She had noticed that the mosquitoes had gotten worse lately, but she honestly could not tell if the mosquito issue had sprung up after the city light went down or after the culture sprites took up their defensive positions around the city and let the grass get too long. Either way, she’d have to apply some honey to the bites to stop them from itching when she thought of it next—if Caleb had not eaten it all with his bread. A few of the bites were bleeding since she had brushed the bugs off before they had sealed their work with their coagulating serum. She wiped absently at the blood as she walked into the workshop.
She paused at the entryway and blinked in the Dikaió light. Caleb and Alex had piled the next fire sprite just inside the doorway, and she had to step cautiously over and around the rusted metal heap. Caleb’s presence in the workshop explained the wedged door. The boy was a hulking beast these days, though Mallory had to admit he was not all brawn with no brain. After all, this was his plan. One day, he would make an amazing Governor of the city, and the way things were going, she would be his Governess. The thought brought a smile to her lips, and she realized that, for the first time, she felt at peace with the idea of not being the City Matriarch. She was a fighter, and now that she had something other than her station to fight for, she did not mind losing that station to her unborn sister. Working with Caleb like this was actually very fulfilling, and without the Dikaió as an issue, she felt that she could be a very good Governess.
Of course, she would have to survive the Administrator’s plot, and in order to do that, she’d have to finish these fire sprites. Once she skirted the heap of fire sprite parts on the floor, she inspected her work on the nearly completed specimen that she had been working on all day. Checking the current step in the book, she quickly checked off and squared up what she saw in her own model—only one thing was off. One of the Dikaió box’s tendrils were not connected to the black metal panels on the sprite’s shoulder. She was not entirely sure what the panels were for, but she snaked the tendril up behind the gears and pistons, being careful not to get it tangled in the moving parts. The tendrils had small arrowheads on them that collapsed slightly when pressed, and when they were plugged into a corresponding slot on a sprite, the tips of the arrow would spring out with a click, and the tendril would not come back out unless the tips were depressed with a flat instrument. Mallory had suffered a few finger injuries trying to get the things back out of the wrong slot, so she double-checked the book before shoving this tendril’s arrow into the corresponding slot in the black panels. Confident that this was the right course, she slid the tip into place.
As soon as the edges of the arrow clicked, a red light began to blink on the Dikaió box. Mallory laughed out loud, “Will you look at that?” She sat back and watched the blinking light, mesmerized by its syncopated blip, a little sino-atrial node in the heart of a giant that had sparked to life. She looked at the other parts of the fire sprite to see if anything else had changed. Nothing had changed as far as she could tell—just that one hopeful, blinking light.
She shrugged and went back to work. The tanks that would hold the accelerant on the back of the fire sprite seemed pretty solid. When she and Caleb had pulled them off in the dark forest, they were full of old rainwater, so she was certain they could hold the accelerant. They’d decided to use the same fuel they had used for the old magic lamp in the Book Club and had borrowed three fifty-gallon barrels of paraffin from the Culture guild. However, the rubber hoses that ran to the nozzles were full of holes and would need to be replaced, so she ripped those off and grabbed some of the hydrant-sprite hoses that Caleb had provided. They were about half the length of the fire sprite’s hoses, so somehow, she was going to need to splice two of them together, and that splice would need to be waterproof to keep the paraffin from leaking all over.
She bit her lip absent-mindedly and started digging through the parts from the Sprite Rookery, hoping for the mechanical muse to strike. Eventually, she spotted a tub of rubber gaskets that seemed like the right size for the ends of the two hoses to fit inside. She grabbed some wire and used a knife to notch it then bent it back and forth to break off a piece that was roughly twice as long as the diameter of the gasket. She inserted a hose into one side of the gasket and wrapped the wire around it, twisting the wire around itself like a bread tie. With each turn, the gasket began to shrink, and soon she could not pull the tubing back out of the gasket. She gave the wire a few more twists just to be sure the hose was not coming back out. She repeated the process with the other hose and then connected the new hosing to the fire sprite’s tank and nozzles.
At that point, as near as she could tell, everything that was left really was cosmetic. She sanded at a bit of the rust on the front of the hole and ended up making a bigger hole in the sprite steel. Mallory frowned at the fire sprite. “Well, I guess you’re not going to be a pretty sprite, are you?”
She pulled a board toward her that sat on small wheels about an inch off the ground—it was another tool she had invented with the abundance of wheels now available in her shop, and she used it to move heavy things without lifting so much. She pushed against the fire sprite’s top and tipped it upward slightly, then she kicked the rolling board under it. She rocked the sprite back and forth until she had managed to leverage it atop her board. Then she rolled the entire sprite over to the side where it could rest out of the way. It was time to start working on the next mess of a sprite that Caleb and Alex had dragged in.
She found herself looking at the book much less often with the second sprite, and she replaced and clicked the Dikaió box’s tendrils in much earlier on this one. Sure enough, the red light began blinking just like the first. She looked back and forth at the two red lights. At first, they were blinking at different rates, and then after about a minute, they seemed to sync with each other. Mallory moved to the other side of the room, so she could see them at the same time, and noted that the two lights were blinking at the exact same frequency.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Mallory mused, and then started back to work, polishing and repairing the hose on the second fire sprite.
She had not gotten very far, when the door to the workshop was ripped open. She let out a scream and spun around half-expecting to see magistrates bursting in to arrest her. It was just a hot, sweaty, and very stinky Caleb. His body odor hit her like a wall. “Oh my gosh, Caleb!” she yelled waving her hand in front of her nose.
He looked at her incredulously, breathing hard. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been out busting my butt all day, and the first thing you’re going to say is that I stink?”
Alex yelled from behind, “It’s horrible. I’ve got little pinecones shoved up my nose, and I still can’t get away from it.”
Caleb burst into laughter and looked over his shoulder, “You just wait; I’ll get some bigger pinecones for your nose, Nelson!”
Mallory laughed too. “Put some up mine while you’re at it!” She kept waving her hand in front of her nose while her eyes watered.
“Laugh it up, you two! You know what? You all can unload this last sprite by yourselves while I go shower if it’s that bad. How about that?”
Mallory jumped off her chair and rushed over to him. “No, no! Okay you win. You smell like roses.”
Alex, who still had not been able to get into the workshop because Caleb was standing right in the doorway, shouted from behind him again. “That’s fine. The stink under your arms is stronger than the muscles in them anyway!”
Caleb spun around and ran out of the door. “Oh, yeah!?”
Mallory ran out after him into surprising darkness. She had no idea that she had been working until after sunset, but the moon was a quarter of the way into the sky surrounded by stars that were already twinkling. Alex was behind one of the Chorus carts, leaning slightly to the right, then to the left, getting ready to run in the opposite direction of whichever way Caleb decided to move. He was faking right and left, trying to get her to bolt before committing to going around the cart.
Mallory laughed at the sight of her friends playing just like they had when they were kids. It was funny to think of the three of them as children. It had not really been that long since they were, and now the heaviness of change and tragedy had shifted them to adult responsibilities. Yet, they were planning an armed defense to an armed revolution, and she was not sure the adults were even aware of any of the plans taking shape.
She bit her lip and tilted her head a bit. No, that was not completely true. No one had tried to stop them from building fire sprites. She was pretty sure the adults were oblivious to their plans—they were probably knee-deep in their own plans for how to handle the Administrator. Besides, why would anyone suspect that the trio was up to anything mischievous? If one of the adults were to check in on them, they would see them engaged in a harmless game of tag in the Matriarch’s backyard.
Just then Caleb reached out over the Chorus cart and grabbed Alex’s glove. She squealed in glee and pulled away, leaving Caleb holding just the glove and laughing. Mallory inhaled sharply. Alex’s scarred hand hovered between her and Caleb; its fingers flexing and unflexing, stretching for the glove. Caleb was still laughing, but slowly the realization that he was the only one dawned on him. He looked at Alex’s face, and then over his shoulder at Mallory. Mallory could not take her eyes off Alex’s arm. In the hospital, they had bonded over their disfigured arms, but Mallory’s disfigurement had been temporary. Once the cast was off, it had only taken a few days before it was difficult to tell that her arm had ever been shriveled, white, and stinky. Alex’s arm retained all the scars of the fire, and it would never heal—it was a reminder that their childhood really had ended. This momentary relapse into innocent play was just flippant fantasy—a covering over the scars of their sin, of which Alex would forever bear the mark.
Caleb averted his eyes from her scars and handed Alex back the glove, and she solemnly covered her hand. “I’m sorry . . .” he started to say.
“I should be getting back,” Alex interrupted. “My mother and father will be anxious to know where I’ve been.”
Caleb shrugged. “I guess I should be going as well.”
Mallory felt a tug of something bottomless in her heart and said nothing until her two friends started to walk away from each other in opposite directions toward their respective houses.
“Wait!” She shouted. “You haven’t seen what I’ve done.” Caleb and Alex both turned around.
“Done?” Alex asked.
“Yeah! I’ve got one of them finished.”
“Finished?” Caleb murmured. “Already?”
“Yes, come and see!” Mallory ran back into the workshop followed by her friends. She showed them the finished fire sprite up against the far wall. “Ta-da!” She motioned her hands like a magician showing off a trick.
“It doesn’t look done,” Alex said, walking over and picking off a piece of rust from a gaping hole in the hull.
“Well, unless we have a Sprite Master and a Smith guild expert fashioning a new shell, this is really as good as it gets. But the insides are all together—and look!” Mallory pointed to the blinking light on the Dikaió box. “It’s doing something.”
“What does it mean?” Caleb asked.
Mallory paused and looked back at the blinking light. She shrugged and waved her hands in circles like her father did when her mother asked impossible questions. “Something!”
Caleb looked confused, and then nodded acceptingly. “Something.”
Alex picked up the book sitting on Mallory’s worktable. “Let’s try the words.”
Mallory’s head snapped toward her friend. “Right now? I mean the others aren’t done, and without the Dikaió, we don’t know if the words will even work.”
Alex shrugged. “And we never will unless we try the words.”
She did not wait for their approval but began reading the birthing words in the book: “Dikaió ignus flamma asprueto.”
Mallory thought that the little blinking light flickered for a moment, but then it continued its slow pulse unabated. The fire sprite did not move an inch, and the three friends’ shoulders sagged in defeat. Mallory turned to Caleb and asked, “so, what now?”
His brow furrowed. “Are you sure you put it together, right? I mean you did it awfully fast, Mal.”
“You’re welcome to check my work, Caleb, but I’m pretty sure it’s right.”
Alex put the book back on the table and said, “It’s late. We can all take another look tomorrow. I think we still have some time, but while we work on them tomorrow, let’s think about alternatives if the fire sprites don’t pan out, okay?”
Caleb shook his head unbelievingly. “Not pan out?”
Alex put a gloved hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t our only option, Caleb. Failure is just an opportunity to try again. It’s not the end of the story, okay?”
He sighed heavily and said, “okay.”
This time the friends did part ways; each heading to their parents’ homes, heads hung in defeat. Mallory mentally retraced the schematics of the fire sprite in the mental image of the book she had built in her mind’s eye. Nothing was out of place physically, but she knew, just like Caleb and Alex knew, that the problem was not likely a mechanical one. The problem was that Mallory and Alex had destroyed everyone’s ability to control magic, and without the Dikaió, they could no more birth a fire sprite than they could command a kitchen sprite to get them a drink of water from the tap inside their homes. She could think of no way to combat the Administrator and his magistrates, nor prevent him from enacting whatever he deemed appropriate in punishing her.
She walked into the backdoor of her house, and the house was as brightly lit as ever with all the Dikaió lights forever shining in every room. She made her way slowly through the kitchen and thought briefly that she should eat, but even though there was a gnawing pain of hunger in her stomach, the thought of eating after her failure made her feel nauseous. She passed through the kitchen and dining room and began to ascend the stairs to her bedroom, when her father’s voice surprised her from the sitting room: “Mallory?” It had been a long time since she had heard her father’s voice, and its sound made her heart roll over in her chest. Tears sprang immediately to her eyes, and she ran back down the few stairs she had climbed into the sitting room.
Her mother and father were sitting on opposite ends of the large plush couch under the picture window, and they had left a space between them for her to sit. She bounded over and sat down. Her parents both embraced her, enfolding her betwixt them. Mallory’s tears became rivers. Her body heaved in sobs, and she clung desperately at their arms, hoping that they would never pull away from her again. Her mother began to hum the wordless hymns of Mallory’s childhood, and the family swayed in rhythmic coziness. Mallory could always sense that whatever the words to these old hymns were, they contained a powerful Dikaió magic—maybe even more ancient than the Dikaió; some kind of powerful magic that, if it could be accessed, could make everything that was wrong in the world right again.
After a long time of holding each other, her father pulled back and said, “You know then? I’m so sorry, Mallory, my dearest girl. Your mother tried so hard to change their minds.”
Mallory shook loose from their embrace. “Know what?” Her voice squeaked through tears and dust.
Her father’s eyes grew wide. “I thought that’s why you were upset.”
Mallory shook her head, “I was upset because you two haven’t talked to me in weeks, but then you called me in, and I thought . . . I thought . . . I don’t know.” She sat up suddenly as they edged back to their corners on the couch. “What is going on?”
Her mother’s face hardened with the undeniable look of duty. Now the Matriarch, her face still streaked with the tears of a mother as she looked at her daughter and said, “The City Council and the other two members of the Triad have called for a trial.”
So that was it. They were out of time. The fire sprites had failed and there was no longer time to invent a device or come up with a plan. All she could do was pay the price and let her friends and family try to carry on without her. Mallory nodded and answered quietly, “Oh, I see. And the Administrator is calling for the death penalty?”
Her parents’ eyes widened, and they glanced at each other with hurt in their eyes. “We tried to protect you from their attacks. We thought it would be best to keep these discussions from you,” her mother was defending herself, talking through the reasons why she had not spoken to her daughter.
“I’m not so ignorant, you know. I have my own connections to the inner workings of the city. I am the Matriarch’s daughter,” Mallory said, trying to appear confident. “And if my fate is to die for my sins, I’ll do it with dignity.”
Mallory’s mother’s face fell, and her voice rose several decibels. “I tried to stop them. I tried with all my influence, Mallory, but without the Dikaió . . . without the Dikaió—I’m sorry, Mallory. I’m so sorry.” Tears choked her words again as Matriarch and mother converged in sadness.
Mallory sat back between her parents once more, and they fell on her in an embrace, both of them sobbing now. But Mallory’s eyes were dry. She could not bring herself to grieve her own death, and she felt happy that her parents had at least fought for her, even though she had been partly to blame. She was not even upset if she should pay the price for the trouble and save Alex—at least her friend would still be alive. She did not even feel the sting of defeat in failing to birth the fire sprites to fight the Administrator anymore. At this point, she felt a magnificent emptiness.
“When is the trial then?” she asked, her voice dull and emotionless.
Her father shuddered in sobs. “Tomorrow, my sweet girl. Tomorrow and we will never see you again.”