Meralda lowered the note to her desk. Mug quickly extended half a dozen eyes to examine it.
While Mug read, the Captain plucked the toy soldier from Meralda's desk, holding it carefully in his calloused hand.
"I know this toy," he said. "Was all the rage last Yule. Got one for my nephew. Part of a set. Comes with a tiny animated dragon. They fight."
He put the toy soldier carefully down.
"Those poor people," said Mug, after a moment. His leaves shivered, though the air in the Laboratory was perfectly still.
"Indeed," said Meralda. She met the Captain's weary blue eyes. "They're doomed, are they not?"
"Every airship in Tirlin is racing north in pursuit," said the Captain.
"Every Army troop carrier, every freight hauler. Every mail boat. Every passenger liner and every diplomatic flyer and
probably half the smugglers and ne'er-do-wells too. They've all taken to the skies." He let out a long, heavy sigh. "But yes. Even with all those airships out looking, I'm afraid that woman and those kids are done for."
"Well now wait just a moment," said Mug. "That's got to be hundreds of airships. Surely one will be fast enough to catch up to them."
"No. They won't be." The Captain rose and began to pace, his hands balled into fists at his sides.
"The Royal Meteorologists claim the storm moved off at nearly thirty miles an hour. If the
Sammi
is
caught in that storm, she's already fifty miles out, if not further. And still moving. But that's not the worst of it."
"No." Meralda looked back down at the note. "They've lost the ability to vent gas, and half their craft is gone.
They're in an uncontrolled ascent."
"Isn't that better than an uncontrolled descent?" asked Mug.
"Not in the end," said the Captain. "Three things will happen if they keep rising. One,
their gas bag will swell and burst, sending them falling down like a bag of stones."
"That would seem to make the other two possible events superfluous," said Mug.
"Even if the gas envelope holds, they'll either freeze or rise into air too thin to breathe,"
said Meralda. She read the note again, marveling at the woman's calm tone. She wrote that note on a
wrecked airship, caught in the grip of a killing storm, thought Meralda. And yet her tone suggests
she might well be ordering new orchids for the street-side garden.
Meralda rose as well, and joined the Captain as he paced. Mug kept eyes on them both, careful not to cross any, as his Mistress and the Captain prowled the Laboratory floor.
"I've already spoken to the Airship guild," said the Captain. "If Mrs. Ghote's estimate of their ascent is correct, in twenty hours they'll be in danger of bursting their gas envelope, if they can't vent. He claims the bag will probably last another four or five hours past that, but it won't make much difference, because the air thins out around 20,000 feet and the temperature drops to zero."
"If 20,000 feet is the limit, then the Ghotes have…" Meralda trailed off, making the calculations in her head. "…twenty-three hours, from this moment. No more."
"That's what I estimate as well. And even if, by some miracle, another airship spots the
Sammi,
what are they to do? Even the Guild man I spoke to said throwing mooring hooks at her was as likely to bring her down as pull her alongside." The Captain came to a halt and turned, surveying the ranks of shelves and racks that filled the rear of the Royal Thaumaturgic Laboratory. "Which is why I've come to you, Sorceress. Valiant effort it may be, but I'm afraid the whole of the Army Air Corps and all the rest is going to come up short. Surely there's some flying contraption back there -- " he gestured toward the shadows that filled the Laboratory's ranks of artifact shelves "-- that might save these people?"
Meralda moved to stand at the Captain's side.
Some two hundred years before Meralda was born, an enterprising Mage named Arbolt undertook a project to organize the Royal Thaumaturgic Laboratory's stored treasures by function. He'd worked out a system of spellwork classification, Meralda recalled, and he'd been in his first week of actually moving the accumulated products of seven hundred years of applied sorcery into something resembling an organized collection when an animated suit of armor dropped a crate containing dancing lead ballerinas onto his head.
Twice.
No further effort had been undertaken to bring order to the chaos of the Laboratory's shelves.
Still, thought Meralda, there are a number of known flying devices. Medwort's Classic Carpet, for instance.
Or Gervin's Soaring Chair. Both impressive feats of magic, in their own way.
Both utterly useless in saving anyone aboard the
Sammi.
The Captain snapped his fingers. "Isn't there a flying carpet back there? I remember stories about it. Some Mage used to fly it around when he was deep in his cups, as I recall."
Meralda shook her head. "There is. Row eighteen, shelf fifty-six, drawer number forty-four. But we can't use it."
"Why not?"
"The levitation spell only works in sight of the Palace, and it can only rise, fall, and make wide right turns."
The Captain glared at the shadows.
Meralda would have preferred to stalk down the ranks of shelves, but she knew the
Captain would insist on following, and many of the items were unpredictable toward strangers.
So she walked the rows in her mind, desperate to find anything which might help the Air Corps reach the
Sammi
before the Ghotes froze or choked on the cold, thin air.
Conroy's Towering Pedestal? No, thought Meralda, while it might elevate someone to great height, it can't be moved while doing so, and the
Sammi
is unlikely to be in a perfectly vertical ascent even if we knew where it was.
Loppy's Implacable Rope? Meralda frowned. It was said to be quite capable of seeking out and reeling in heavy loads, but it was limited by its length. Meralda considered the size of the rope's box, and pushed the idea aside.
The Captain stood quietly by as Meralda considered and rejected a dozen magical contrivances. Only two, Pancat's Airborne Disc and Morten's Reverse Faller, could even hope to reach the altitude required. Neither was large enough to lift a house-cat, much less lower a person to safety.
"Nothing at all back there, then?"
"I'm afraid not, Captain."
"Well, it was worth asking. I'll keep you posted on the rescue efforts, Mage."
Meralda turned to face him.
"Perhaps, Captain, we must look to the future, rather than to the past."
From his place on Meralda's desk, Mug raised his fronds and shook them.
"Mistress, I know what you're thinking, and it's madness," he cried. "Madness, or worse!"
The Captain frowned. "What's the houseplant on about?" he said. "And the Ghotes don't have much of a future, unless you've got a very special rabbit to pull out of a powerfully magic hat, Mage."
Meralda pretended to ignore Mug's protestations. "I may know a way to reach the
Sammi."
"You know a better way to fly than aboard an airship?"
"Don't do it, Mistress, let the Air Corps handle this!"
Meralda crossed to her desk, the Captain close behind. She pushed her current work, a refinement of a holdstone cooling jar, into a corner, and then she laid down a fresh sheet of clean drawing paper before seating herself and taking up a pen.
Mug groaned. "Captain, it's up to you now to talk some sense into her before she takes to the skies in some half-baked flying machine."
"Hush," said the Captain, as Meralda began to draw.
Her pen scratched upon the paper. She bit her lower lip as she drew.
"It's too late," said Mug, defeated. He swiveled all his eyes accusingly upon the Captain. "What have you done?"
The Captain watched Meralda draw for a moment, and then he quietly backed away.
"I'll bring more coffee," he said, when his back was at the Laboratory doors. "And lunch."
Meralda mumbled a reply. The Captain closed the massive Laboratory doors behind him.
"I don't know why I bother talking, as no one ever listens," said Mug. Then he simulated a deep sigh, and set about checking Meralda's math as she paused in her drawing to scribble calculations at the paper's edge.
"Dropped a seven there," said Mug. "Oh, I said 'dropped.' What a wit I am."
The hurried scratch of Meralda's pen was Mug's only reply.
Meralda pushed back from her desk, stood, and stretched.
Her back ached. She had a tendency to slump in her chair when deep in concentration, and her resolve to improve her posture always vanished as her calculations grew complex. Her right hand was cramped and sore. Her eyes were weary, her neck stiff, her head beginning to pound -- but there it was, scrawled across three wrinkled sheets of good High Street Brilliant White drafting paper.
A means of flying without fragile bags of lifting gas or capricious levitation spells.
His eyes hanging limp and closed, Mug slept. Meralda moved her hand toward him, intending to wake him, but decided instead to review her sketches and calculations one last time.
It's simple enough, she thought. I use the same voltaic storage cells that power my fans and
spark-lights to move a small electrical current through a coil of copper wire. The coil of
wire is wound around a shaft of iron, and I can control the current using a hand-turned rheostat. A meter shows me the current flow.
And when the electrical circuit is made complete by throwing a switch, the current
in the coil creates a magnetic field. That much has been known for at least a century, mused Meralda.
But no one before me ever suspected that moving magic through the same copper coil would create not a magnetic field, but a gravitational one. Meralda thought back to the day she'd accidentally discovered the effect, and she glanced upward at the chip in the Laboratory's granite ceiling, where the coil had flung her apparatus.
Mug's leaves stirred, and his eyes, one by one, began to open and bob about. Half a dozen fixed themselves on the drawings, while the rest regarded Meralda.
"You've done it," he said, after a moment.
Meralda sank back into her chair. "I have."
Mug poked at a section of the drawing with the tip of a curled leaf. "What's this bit here? Why the battery?"
"I latch the magical current to the electrical current. Then I can control the arcane flow simply by moderating the electrical current with a rheostat. A single latched spell will suffice for each coil."
Mug bobbed his eyes. "Clever, Mistress. This should be a two, not a seven." He indicated a long string of numbers by a sketch of a coil housing.
Meralda leaned down, frowning, and in a moment she crossed out the offending number and penned a new one in its place. "Six places behind the decimal. An error, but not significant."
"Maybe if you're not looking down on rooftops, it's not," said Mug. "Mistress, this is brilliant. Maybe you will one day make the skies safer, even if you can't help the Ghotes."
"What makes you think I can't help the Ghotes?"
Mug's leaves shook as if in a wind. "Surely you can't mean to throw together a few turns of wire and go flapping about the heavens this afternoon!"
Meralda put down her pen. "Surely you can't mean we simply sit here and let an entire family perish without lifting a finger."
"The Captain said every airship in Tirlin is after the
Sammi.
Mistress, I know you want to help. So do I. But we're Mage and Houseplant, not airship pilots. What can we do?"
He's right, thought Meralda, as dozens of magical clocks chimed out the hour from every corner of the Laboratory. One o'clock, which means the
Sammi
has perhaps nineteen hours before it reaches the freezing, thin air that will doom the Ghotes.
Nineteen hours? There's just not enough time. I can't build an airship in a day. Less than a day.
"Why couldn't the Ghotes have taken an interest in boating?" asked Mug. "Not that boats aren't floating coffins. Bad as airships, I say. Why you legged people can't just stay in one place…"
Mug trailed off. Meralda was out of her chair and running for the Laboratory doors, skirts flying, calling for the Captain before she reached the hall.
The doors slammed shut. Mug turned his eyes to the ceiling and groaned.
It took ten Palace guards to wrestle the antique rowboat through the Palace halls, up the stairs,
and into the Laboratory, where it came to rest on a makeshift stand composed of half a dozen purloined dining room serving carts.
Meralda prowled around the rowboat, measuring tape and notebook in hand.
"Where did you get this?" she asked, scribbling measurements. "It shows no signs of ever having been wet."
The Captain grinned. "From the Royal Museum," he said. "It hasn't touched water since King Scorbin drowned while messing about in it."
Mug sputtered and shook his leaves. "Is that really the only boat you could find? Honestly, did we run out of lakes?"
"It was restored after being put on exhibit. It's been meticulously maintained ever since. There's no more sound and sturdy craft within a day's ride from here, unless you'd prefer one of the waterlogged paddle-boats they rent out on Lake Pleasant for two pennies an hour."
"No. This is perfect. Better than I hoped for." Meralda stuck her pencil behind her right ear. "It will need some modifications. But it will suffice. Captain, you're a marvel. Did you perhaps bring a carpenter along as well?"
"I've got half a dozen carpenters and the only boat-wright I could find right outside, Mage. With tools and lumber."
"Call them in, please."
The Captain bellowed. Wide-eyed carpenters and a single perplexed boat maker sidled cautiously into the Laboratory, clutching their tools and whispering.
"Gentlemen," shouted the Captain, moving to stand beside Meralda. "The lady, if you don't know, is Mage Ovis, Royal Thaumaturge to the Kingdom of Tirlin. She is in charge here. If she says jump I want your boots off the floor, no arguing, is that clear?"
The builders responded with a muttered chorus of 'ayes.'