Hope and the Patient Man Read online

  There was no answer, and he searched around his pallet, found a pair of dark-blue trousers, and pulled them on under the blankets before standing up and ringing a bell beside her bed. The trousers were too small for him.

  “Weren’t you wearing green trousers last night?” she asked.

  “You really don’t remember, do you? What’s the last thing you recall?” he said, just as a young man in the uniform of a healer’s assistant opened the door.

  “Ah, you’re awake, Mage,” he said, and took her wrist, checking her physical state. “How’s the head?”

  “Hurts.”

  “Constant, or pounding?”

  “Pounding.”

  “Hmm.” He dropped her wrist. “I need to fetch the duty healer. Won’t be long.” He hurried out again.

  Patient was looking uncomfortable. “Excuse me,” he said, “I need the lavatory. Do you…?”

  “Yes, but it’s not urgent. You go.”

  He left the room too, and she slumped back into the bed. She had never been in a healing house before, but she assumed that was where she was. Looking round, she saw a plain, functional room, clean, with pale surfaces and no ornamentation. The crisp linen on the bed weighed heavily on her weak limbs.

  What had happened to put her in a healing house? And why did her head hurt?

  Patient came back from the lavatory, and she asked him to help her there too, overriding his protests that he wasn’t sure she should get up. She leaned on him, with his right arm around her, his other hand occupied with his cane. Rather than embarrass him, she managed to sit down and stand up without him present.

  Duly relieved and back in bed, she said, “Now. Tell me about last night.”

  “What do you remember? Do you remember leaving the restaurant?”

  “I think so.”

  “You’d had a lot to drink. You tried to kiss me.”

  “Kiss you? I had had a lot to drink, then.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, sorry. You know what I mean.”

  “The curse, yes. Well, it triggered, and sent you into some kind of fit.” He looked down, shamefaced. “I couldn’t hold you up. My leg…”

  “Oh, Patient. Not your fault.”

  “Well, it cursed well feels like my fault. Can’t even catch you when you’re falling,” he spat out, still not looking at her.

  “Patient, it’s all right.”

  “It’s not. You hit your head on the ground. Your head, Hope.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she said. She didn’t feel fine. She felt like she’d been shoved head-first through a knothole, with paddles. But she knew how much he hated the limitations his injury placed on him.

  The door opened, and a brisk middle-aged healer strode in, followed by the assistant they had seen earlier. He introduced himself — she instantly forgot his name — and medical examination commenced, the healer touching his hand gently to the tender area on the left side of her head and asking her a sequence of questions. Patient volunteered the information that she couldn’t remember anything from the time of her fit the previous night.

  “And this is a long-standing issue? Some sort of mindmagic?” asked the healer.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you sought treatment?”

  “I’ve been meaning to, but with my job… it’s difficult to…”

  “So no. All right.” He dropped his hand to his lap. “The good news is that the damage was minimal, we caught it quickly, and Healer Delight did an excellent job of fixing it up last night. You’ll have headaches for a little while, though. I’ll give you an amulet for them before you leave. You’ll want to get some willow tea, as well. If you start getting any other symptoms, like nausea, or dizziness, confusion, vision or hearing problems, or if the headaches get worse, contact a healer immediately. You’re resident in Illene?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t know any mindhealers there to recommend for you, unfortunately, but I’m sure you can find one, and I urge you to do so. These things shouldn’t be left untreated. Do the two of you live close to each other?”

  “No,” said Patient. “I live in Redbridge.”

  “You’re in regular contact?”

  “Yes.”

  “Make sure you check up on her and make her go to the mindhealer.”

  Patient nodded, meeting her eye with a determined expression that said: I don’t usually try to make you do anything, but this is an exception.

  “Can I go back to work?” she asked. She was half hoping for the answer “no”, the way she felt, but she couldn’t stay away for long.

  “Not for a few days, at least,” said the healer. “Take it gently. You’ve had a nasty knock to your brain. Don’t try to do magic with it until you feel up to it. Do you need a letter for your employer?”

  She shook her head, very gently so as not to dislodge anything. Her boss, Dignified Printer, would accept her word without question.

  “All right. Let’s get you that headache amulet, and get you dressed. How did you come here?”

  She looked helplessly at Patient.

  “In a cab. But we have an airhorse which is hopefully still around the corner from the restaurant.”

  “Yours?” the healer said to him, with interest.

  “Mine,” said Hope.

  “Well, your friend will have to drive it. I wouldn’t let you control an ordinary horse at the moment, much less one of those contraptions.”

  They exchanged a look of consternation. “We’ll work something out,” said Patient. After his moment of frustration over not being able to save her the previous night, he had fallen back into his competent persona, the one she thought of as the Warden.

  Getting Hope dressed, trying several different amulets until they found a pair that together suppressed the headache, hanging the carved bone tubes on a piece of wire that Hope could clasp around her neck, and the various discharge formalities took, it seemed, half of the remainder of the morning, and they finally took a cab to a hotel near the restaurant. Patient reclaimed his trousers, much to his obvious relief, and they walked a short distance to where they had left the airhorse. The usual cluster of onlookers had formed around the machine, skewed towards male street youth, but representing all ages, both genders and a cross-section of society.

  “How hard is it to drive?” asked Patient out of the corner of his mouth as they approached.

  “Not that hard,” she said. “I mastered it almost immediately. You squeeze the right lever to go faster, the left lever to brake, and steer with the handles. That’s all you need to know.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he muttered.

  They politely, all things considered, encouraged the crowd to stand back while Patient helped Hope onto the machine, a gleaming thing of red paint and polished brass. Extending from the hubs of each of the four wheels, pistons took the place of wheel spokes, each piston supporting one segment of the ground-contacting surface. A metal mesh held the segments together on the inside. This meant that the wheels could be adjusted to different road conditions, and gave a smoother ride than rigid cart-style wheels. A long red-leather seat accommodated two people astride the machine, with a running board on each side for their feet to rest on. Spreading brass handlebars held the control levers Hope had mentioned.

  They strapped on helmets, repurposed safety helmets from the manufactory where Hope worked, with noise-suppressing gauze hanging beneath them and gathered at the neck, and built-in eye protection.

  “Can you activate the gate?” Hope asked.

  “What?”

  “The gate. Brings heat through from another space, which heats the water to make steam for the compressor.”

  “I assume so,” he said. “How much mageforce does it take?”

  “Doesn’t take much,” she said. “About the same as a modern oven.”

  “I’ve never started one of those,” he said.

  “Just touch the sigil and say the Dwarvish word.” She pointed to t
he word for “start” marked on a brass plate just behind the handlebars, with a sigil inscribed below it. He touched it and spoke. Nothing happened.

  “Try again,” she said, “only try not to put vowels in it.”

  “Tshk,” he said. There was a small thunk, and a boiling noise began deep inside the machine.

  “Good,” said Hope. “Now, you don’t have to wait for the boiler to come to pressure, there’s a compressed-air tank already fully charged. Just pull on the throttle when you’re ready. Clear out of the way, please!” she added, raising her still-croaky voice. The crowd pulled back onto the pavement.

  Patient, muttering quietly under his breath, pulled in the throttle lever and the airhorse jerked forward, propelled by twin compressed-air motors that drove the back wheels.

  “Smooth pull,” she said.

  The muttering stopped as he concentrated, and they began to move off more smoothly, accelerating rapidly to a fast walking pace. They turned the first corner, veering back and forth in erratic arcs until he got the hang of the steering and startling a nearby horse. The rider shouted an epithet at them.

  “Keep it fairly slow until we get out into the country,” she said. “Even then, we need to watch for horses.”

  He didn’t reply, but navigated them out of the city to the north.

  Chapter Two: Rosie

  “Can I help you, Mistress?” said Bucket the gnome with his usual cheerful smile. He spoke in Pektal, the human language used throughout the realm. He’d been told that his gnomish accent was heavy, though humans seemed to understand him most of the time.

  The tall, thin human woman standing at the lab door adjusted what Bucket assumed was a fashionable hat, given that it looked completely impractical. From under its rolled edge, strands of hair protruded in random directions.

  “Industry of Rosewall,” she introduced herself, turning her large eyeglasses downwards to focus on his face. “I’m here to see Mage Hope?”

  “I’m sorry, the mage isn’t well,” he said.

  “Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that. Nothing serious, I hope?” She herself looked very serious, peering through those big spectacles.

  “A small accident,” said Bucket. “She’s expected to be gone for several days. Can I take a message?”

  “Oh, if you would. Could I come in and write something?”

  “Certainly,” said Bucket, standing aside to let her through the door. “Take a seat anywhere you can find a clear space. Cup of tea?” He had given up apologising for the mess. It was more or less beyond apologising for.

  She looked around with a fascinated stare. “This is wonderful!” she said. “I never dreamed… is that some kind of gyrus linkage?”

  “No good asking me,” said Bucket. “I just work here. Fetching tea, and such,” he hinted.

  “Oh, sourbark, please,” she said absently, still staring around, and Bucket bustled off. At least she had good taste in tea.

  In a nest of the big erasable writing boards that stood throughout the lab, dividing it into little junk-filled rooms, he encountered the Master, Dignified Printer, fiddling with some gadget. “Is the mage back?” he asked, not looking up.

  “No, Master, it’s some woman to see her. She’s going to leave a note.”

  “Oh. I heard the voice, and thought… Oh.”

  The Master didn’t show much emotion, as a usual thing, but Bucket had concluded that he was fond of Mage Hope, in his own way. He certainly was calmer when she was around. His clever fingers fumbled the gadget and dropped it, spilling cogs, and he leapt up and pursued one of them which rolled past the boards and into a pile of junk.

  Standing up again, he met the startled gaze of Industry of Rosewall.

  “You’re him,” said the young woman, attempting once again to adjust her hat. “The clever man.”

  “That’s what they call me,” he admitted. “Who are you?”

  Bucket blinked in surprise. The Master didn’t usually make conversation. He mostly spoke mathematics.

  “Rosie,” she said. “Um, that’s what everyone calls me. Industry of Rosewall, officially. I’m an investor in your works, for the airhorses, you know. And, um, a great enthusiast for your work.” She found a smile somewhere and tried it on her face, where it looked ill at ease.

  The Master gave the blinking nod that was his usual response when he didn’t have anything specific to say. Bucket’s sense of duty nagged at him to get the tea, but he stayed where he was. He wanted to see how this played out.

  “Your, um, assistant,” she indicated Bucket with a vague wave, “said I should ask you about this. Is it a gyrus linkage?”

  Bucket hadn’t said anything of the kind, but smiled to himself. This ought to be interesting.

  As usual when asked a technical question, the Master came to life like a marionette at the start of the show, and began to speak rapid Dwarvish. To Bucket’s surprise, the woman didn’t seem fazed, but listened with interest, and asked a follow-up question in what, for a human, wasn’t a bad accent, if not as good as the Master’s.

  Bucket slipped away to get the tea. It looked like Industry of Rosewall would be staying for a while.

  Hope closed the book and sighed.

  Under strict medical instructions to stay home and rest, she had hoped to catch up with her back issues of Magical Research, particularly since she had promised them a paper on Dignified’s magical-mathematical symbology. He and she were the only two people who understood it, and there were days when she thought it was actually only him. She had found, though, that she couldn’t concentrate on the dry academic articles. In desperate boredom, she had snuck into her flatmate Briar’s room and raided her shelf of trashy country-house novels.

  She shouldn’t have enjoyed them nearly as much as she did. That Localgold Active. “Active” was certainly a good name for him. Her lips curved into an embarrassed smile just thinking about it.

  She sighed again, pulled out her farspeaker — the invention for which she and Dignified were best known — and checked the eight code wheels. They were already set for one of the matching devices in the lab, so she activated the sympathetic link and turned on the attention-getting clicker.

  Bucket answered, as usual. “Mage Hope!” he said. “There’s a visitor here for you.”

  “Oh!” said Hope. “I’d completely forgotten. The investor woman.”

  “Industry of Rosewall. Yes, she’s talking to the Master.”

  “Is he talking back?”

  “Rapidly. In technical Dwarvish. Which she seems to be following, though since I can’t follow it myself I can’t be certain.”

  “We live in an age of wonders,” said Hope. “I have to say, if she’s the one I remember from the investors’ meeting, she did seem sharp. Asked a very intelligent question about steam engines.”

  “Tall woman, all angles, flyaway hair, big spectacles?”

  “That’s her. Did she say what she wanted? She just wrote to me and asked for a meeting. I assumed it was some financial thing.”

  “She’s hardly said a word I’ve understood since she got here,” said the gnome. “And most of those were in Pektal.”

  “Should I come down?”

  “If you want to see the spectacle, I suppose. But aren’t you supposed to be resting?”

  “Bucket, I’ve been lying here reading badly-written fiction. I’m bored out of my mind. I’ll catch a cab down and see you soon.” She broke the sympathy between the devices before he could object, and went to find her shoes and a coat.

  When she entered the lab, Dignified was sketching on one of the ubiquitous boards, explaining a mechanical principle in his own mathematical system. It had taken her — second in her year at the university, and with a strong mathematical background — well over sixteen days to understand his notation well enough to follow an explanation like that, and she wasn’t surprised to see a croggled expression spreading across the visitor’s face. She made a mercy swoop.

  “Mistress, ah, sorry, Gold Ind
ustry?” The “of Rosewall” indicated that the woman was a member of the Gold class, though she hadn’t used the title in her letter.

  “Mistress, actually. Blood’s too thin for a title,” she said cheerfully, putting out her hand for Hope to press palms in the greeting used between people who weren’t of the ruling class. “Multiple-greats-granddaughter of a localgold, and we never got round to changing the family name. You must be Mage Hope.” She looked at Hope carefully. “Your assistant fellow said you were ill. I must say, you look ill.”

  Hope assumed that whatever Industry’s family did, it wasn’t in the diplomatic corps. “I’m well enough to meet with you,” she said. “Do you want to come through to the manufactory? Mister Gizmo, the manufactory manager…”

  “Oh, I would love to see the manufactory,” she said. “Excuse me, Mister Dignified.” Dignified blinked and nodded as the two women picked their way through the clutter of tools, materials and half-completed projects to the door of the lab.

  They passed through a couple of doors separated by a short corridor, and entered the manufactory, a world of polished brass, tidy workbenches and safety notices in neat Dwarvish letters. Mister Gizmo knew better than to attempt to impose order on Dignified, but he did make sure that the chaos stopped at the door of the lab. Hope conducted the visitor to the glass-fronted office, which was the abode of well-filed papers, and introduced them.

  “Do we want Mister Wheel as well?” asked Hope. “He’s the senior planner, and controls the inventory. I assume you’re here about some financial matter?”

  “Well, actually,” said Industry, adjusting her hat, “I’m not.”

  “No?”

  “No, I, um, wondered if I could come and work here.”

  Gizmo and Hope stared at her.

  “You see, I’m awfully keen on technology,” she said. “I’ve learned, really, as much as a human can about it. Taken the classes at the university, such as they are. Read all the journals and the classic texts. All my great-grandmother’s notebooks. She was an inventor. And there’s nowhere that’s doing more exciting things than the Clever Man’s Works.”

  “Well, Mistress Industry…” began Gizmo.