“In sympathy, most of what you are doing is redirecting energy. Sympathetic links are how the energy travels.” I pulled out the wicking and began kneading the wax into a roughly human-shaped doll. “The first law I mentioned, ‘Similarity enhances sympathy,’ simply means that the more things resemble each other, the stronger the sympathetic link between them will be.”
I held the crude doll up for the class to inspect. “This,” I said, “is Master Hemme.” Laughter muttered back and forth across the hall. “Actually, this is my sympathetic representation of Master Hemme. Would anyone like to take a guess as to why it is not a very good one?”
There was a moment of silence. I let it stretch out for a while, a cold audience. Hemme had traumatized them yesterday and they were slow in responding. Finally, from the back of the room, a student said, “It’s the wrong size?”
I nodded and continued to look around the room.
“He isn’t made of wax either.”
I nodded. “It does bear some small resemblance to him, in general shape and proportion. Nevertheless, it is a very poor sympathetic representation. Because of that, any sympathetic link based off it would be rather weak. Perhaps two percent efficiency. How could we improve it?”
There was another silence, shorter than the first. “You could make it bigger,” someone suggested. I nodded and waited. Other voices called out, “You could carve Master Hemme’s face on it.” “Paint it.” “Give it a little robe.” Everyone laughed.
I held up my hand for quiet and was surprised by how quickly it fell. “Practicality aside, assume you did all these things. A six-foot, fully-clothed, masterfully carved Master Hemme stands beside me.” I gestured. “Even with all that effort the best you might hope for is ten or fifteen percent sympathetic link. Not very good, not very good at all.
“This brings me to the second law, Consanguinity. An easy way of thinking of it is, ‘once together, always together.’ Due to Master Hemme’s generosity I have one of his hairs.” I held it up, and ceremoniously stuck it to the head of the doll. “And as easy as this, we have a sympathetic link that will work at thirty to thirty-five percent.”
I had been watching Hemme. While at first he had seemed a little wary, he had lapsed back into a self-satisfied smirk. He knew that without the appropriate binding and properly focused Alar, all the wax and hair in the world wouldn’t do one whit of good.
Sure that he had taken me for a fool, I gestured to the candle and asked him, “With your permission, Master?” He made a magnanimous wave of compliance and settled back into his chair, folding his arms in front of him, confident in his safety.
Of course I did know the binding. I’d told him so. And Ben had taught me about the Alar, the riding-crop belief, back when I was twelve.
But I didn’t bother with either. I put the doll’s foot into the candle flame, which guttered and smoked.
There was a tense, held-breath quiet as everyone stretched in their seats to get a look at Master Hemme.
Hemme shrugged, feigning astonishment. But his eyes had the look of a jaw trap about to close. A smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth, and he began to rise from his seat. “I feel nothing. Wh—”
“Exactly.” I said, cracking my voice like a whip, startling the students’ attentions back to me. “And why is that?” I looked expectantly at the lecture hall.
“Because of the third law that I had mentioned, Conservation. ‘Energy cannot be destroyed or created, merely lost or found.’ If I were to hold a candle underneath our esteemed teacher’s foot, very little would occur. And since only about thirty percent of the heat is getting through, we do not even get that small result.”
I paused to let them think for a moment. “This is the prime problem in sympathy. Where do we get the energy? Here, however, the answer is simple.”
I blew out the candle and relit it from the brazier. Muttering the few necessary words underneath my breath. “By adding a second sympathetic link between the candle and a more substantial fire….” I broke my mind into two pieces, one binding Hemme and the doll together, the other connecting the candle and the brazier. “We get the desired effect.”
I casually moved the foot of the wax doll into the space about an inch above the candle’s wick, which is actually the hottest part of the flame.
There was a startled exclamation from where Hemme was sitting.
Without looking in his direction I continued speaking to the class in the driest of tones. “And it appears that this time we are successful.” The class laughed.
I blew out the candle. “This is also a good example of the power that a clever sympathist commands. Imagine what would happen if I were to throw this doll into the fire itself?” I held it over the brazier.
As if on cue, Hemme stormed onto the stage. It may have been my imagination, but it seemed to me that he was favoring his left leg slightly.
“It appears that Master Hemme wishes to resume your instruction at this point.” Laughter rippled through the room, louder this time. “I thank you all: students and friends. And thus my humble lecture ends.”
At this point I used one of the tricks of the stage. There is a certain inflection of voice and body language that signals a crowd to applaud. I cannot explain how exactly it is done, but it had its intended effect. I nodded my head to them and turned to face Hemme amidst applause which, though far from deafening, was probably more than any he had ever received.
As he took the last few steps toward me I almost backed away. His face was a fearsome red and a vein pulsed at his temple as if it were about to explode.
For my own part, my stage training helped me maintain my composure, I returned his gaze levelly and held out my hand for him to shake. It was with no small amount of satisfaction that I watched him give a quick glance to the still applauding class, swallow, and shake my hand.
His handshake was painfully tight. It might have gotten worse if I hadn’t made a slight gesture over the brazier with the wax doll. His face went from its livid red to an ashen white more quickly than I would have believed possible. His grip underwent a similar transformation and I regained my hand.
With another nod toward the seated students, I left the lecture hall without a backward glance.
CHAPTER FORTY
On the Horns
AFTER HEMME DISMISSED HIS class, news of what I had done spread through the University like wildfire. I guessed from the student’s reactions that Master Hemme was not particularly well loved. As I sat on a stone bench outside the Mews, passing students smiled in my direction. Others waved or gave laughing thumbs-up.
While I enjoyed the notoriety, a cold anxiety was slowly growing in my gut. I’d made an enemy of one of the nine masters. I needed to know how much trouble I was in.
Dinner in the Mess was brown bread with butter, stew, and beans. Manet was there, his wild hair making him look like a great white wolf. Simmon and Sovoy groused idly about the food, making grim speculations as to what manner of meat was in the stew. To me, less than a span away from the streets of Tarbean, it was a marvelous meal indeed.