32 - Frobbing for Money

When Kyrus emerged from the kids’ room, scrubbed clean and dry, Ilax waited for him at the kitchen table.  In front of him was a white ceramic tray with a pile of glass and metal pieces on one side and three small heaps of salt.  “The weather is very wild for this late in the spring,” Ilax said.  “It’s actually warmer air pouring in.”

“So things should start melting soon?”  Kyrus settled onto the bench across the table.  Nothing untoward happened.  Nothing at all. 

 “It should.  Once we get the strong south wind it will blow all the cold and much of the water away.”

Kyrus nodded, looking down at the mixed fragments on the table.  There were bits of wire, tiny pieces of glass, longer, thinner strands of what looked like actual gold wire.  There was a cluster of glass beads in various colours.  On a plate next to the bits were three piles of coloured sand; a blue-green copper sand, a white salt sand, and the dark pink of toxic sand.  “What’s this?”

“It’s a mandery testing kit,” Ilax said quietly.  “I understand you are reticent about all types of mandery, but I will not be your teacher if you do not attempt this.”

Kyrus froze in the act of pushing himself back away from the table.  “You won’t?”

“No.  Mandery is part of being a warrior.  Even in Lainz I’m certain it is a secret of your war teachers.  Actually, mandery is also part of being a zardukar.  I’m sorry to tell you lad, but I think your mother’s trouble might be her mandery gone wrong.”

“Oh.”  I’m not going to tell him or anyone else about the knives flying around the room when she got sick. People got taken up to the Sunrise Loggia and the Emperor... His Radiance himself would take an interest in you.  Whole families would be moved away if someone where found to have mandery.  It wasn’t necessarily bad... just dangerous.  The Old Queen Bee had sometimes stung people to death, saying that the unlicensed manders were a threat to Him.

Mandery itself was dangerous.  People went crazy sometimes.  Sometimes strange and awful things would happen, especially with the untrained, the unlicensed, those cracked while trying to frob. I don’t want to think that my ma was frobbing anything. 

“Sit down, Kyrus, please.  I am not going to try and let you do any kind of iteration without supervision and I am no owner, nor a suit to put you in a cube.”

Kyrus sank down on the bench again, eyeing the bits and pieces and then looking at Ilax.  “This is really part of war training?”

The Surdeniliarch nodded solemnly. “I swear on my ancestors denay.”  They sat as Kyrus thought about it. 

“All right.”  The boy laid both hands on either side of the tray with the kit in it.  “What do I do?”

Ilax sat back formally and folded his hands.  “First of all, I swear I will not attempt to influence your test.  The first thing I need you to do is focus on the metallic pieces and the glass.”

Kyrus took a deep breath and stared at what looked like random trash.

“Next, I want you to think of how you could manipulate the toxic salts.  You cannot touch them without danger.  You need to move the salts from one side of the tray to the other.  In order.  Blue. White. Red.  You may close your eyes.”

Ilax watched as Kyrus closed his eyes.  For a moment nothing happened.  Salt grains tumbled from the piles but not many and the motion stopped with a spray of blue, white and red spread across the white tray.

Kyrus opened his eyes and sighed.  “There, see?  I could have just been breathing hard to move the salt like that.”

“That’s all right.  I’d like you to try again.  This time think of the machine bits you have, the metals, the glass.  You see each tiny scrap of glass has a metal rim.  Try again, please.”

The boy looked mulish and stuck out his lower lip, but then folded his arms and closed his eyes again.  This time the metal pieces stirred.

A wire rose out of the pile and stood.  A second and a third piece joined the first.  Six wires.  A gold metal spool spun in place and an openwork spiral clicked into place on the legs, then the gold wire spiralled down to form a narrow, elegant needle body.

Sweat stood out on Kyrus’s upper lip.  Why is it so hard to think of... what I want?  It's like doing more and more pushups or running up that enDarkened valley one more time... Elegant solution.  If it is kluged it will be ugly.  It may work... What may work?  I have this picture in my head.

 The glass bits shimmered out of the pile, clinking and settling into place, a blue-green glass bead rose to become the head, the gold flecks in that head shining like thousands of small eyes.  Metal bits climbed the body to brace the wings and the metal and glass dragonfly buzzed its wings once, twice.

The head turned one way, then the other and the wings tilted to fan the salt across the tray in a tiny whirr. 

Blue.

White.

Red.

Kyrus was breathing hard and the red pile of salt was less a pile and more a drift across the tray, though still separate from the other colours.  Every grain was with its own kind, a sea of white porcelain surrounding each.

Three long breaths and the metal dragonfly fell into its component pieces where it stood.  It hadn’t been able to fly. It could only stand and move wings and head.

Ilax called “Kyrus!” Then he reached forward and touched Kyrus between the eyes.  The boy started and his eyes flew open to see the loose bits on the tray before him.

“Oh.  It didn’t work.  Good.  I don’t want to be a mander.  It makes people sick.  It gets people killed.”  He sounded much younger than his years.  He didn’t seem to see that the mounds of salt had all been moved.  His skin was wet and his hands shook as he laid them on the table once more.  “May I have some buttered tea please?”

“Of course, Kyrus,” Ilax had the tea-pot to hand and set the butter and the chutneys out.  “You need to drink this as well.”  He set a glass of thick creamy fluid next to the tea-cup.  “It will make you feel better.  You did very well for a first exercise.  Most don’t manage as much as you have.”

“Really?”

“Really.”  Ilax held his hand over the red sand and it seemed to scramble of its own will into the glass vial he held at the edge of the tray as Kyrus watched, wide eyed.

“Do you think I might be able to do that one day?”

“I’m certain of it.  Just from what I’ve seen today.  I’m a middling ceemander.  Your father was a ceemander as well, a high Cee I'm thinking.”

“Oh.” Kyrus sipped his tea, shaking inside and out.  It was almost too much to bear.  A near death experience and then this.  Light and Dark... I may be a mander like my father, but that means ma cracked.  She must have been frobbing for money.

Do I blame my dead father for that?  Or her?