Unless she reasoned she hadn’t been beaten fairly, after all. It wasn’t an unarguable case.
One by one, I removed the protective amulets and earrings I’d forged over the last couple of weeks, placing them on the small table by the mirror. I felt as if I was naked, utterly unprotected, when I was done, even though the workroom was locked. I’d spent the last six years trying - and often failing - to avoid increasingly nasty pranks from my sisters, pranks that I’d never been able to see coming. Even something as simple as sitting down to dinner could turn into a trial if Alana had had time to hex or jinx the chair. Now ... I was protected, as long as I wore the earrings. But I didn’t know if I could wear them while forging without ruining my work.
Buttoning up my robe, I strode across to the workbench and looked down at the longsword, resting in a web of silver netting. It was big, easily too big for me to carry, even using both hands. I wasn’t exactly a weakling - forging requires physical strength as well as dexterity - but it was still too big for me. Sir Griffons, the man who’d commissioned the sword, was easily twice my size. He had muscles on his muscles ... and yet, normally, even he would have trouble carrying the sword. I couldn’t help thinking that a Kingsman - a servant of His Most Regal Majesty, King Rufus - wouldn’t consider the longsword a practical weapon. But it did have its advantages.
I smiled as I studied the blade, carefully planning out the next step. Casting the blade itself had been simple, a task that anyone could do. Dad had even offered to have one of his apprentices do it for me, pointing out that I didn’t have to waste my time on it. And yet, I’d declined. There was too great a chance that someone else’s involvement would taint the metal, making it impossible to turn the long sword into an Object of Power. I intended to experiment, once I returned to school, to see just how much preliminary work I could pass to someone else without ruining the final effect.
And besides, I wanted to impress Sir Griffons.
The swordsmen of the Thousand-Year Empire had had swords that could cut through anything, according to legend. Their blades had been as light as feathers, in the hands of their true owners; their scabbards had had magic of their own, healing wounds and boosting strength when swordsmen met in combat. And there had been some truth in the legends. I’d seen blades, passed down through the years, that had been magic, when wielded by the descendents of the original owners. My Family Sword, buried in the Family Hearthstone, had powers of its own. You simply couldn’t buy a weapon like that for love or money. Even if a family sold off a priceless heirloom - which would have forced them to put a price on ‘priceless’ - the magic wouldn’t work for anyone outside the direct line. Whatever rites and rituals had been used to transfer a blade to a new owner had been lost hundreds of years ago.
Sir Griffons had been obsessed with owning such a sword for as long as I’d been alive. He’d been pushing my father to either crack the secret behind the blades or come up with something new, something that would allow a Device of Power to survive against counterspells. Every year, Dad had tried something new; every year, the blade had either snapped in combat or lost its magic at terrifying speed. Dad and his apprentices had gone through the books hundreds of times, trying dozens of variations in a desperate bid to crack the secret. They’d known the reward would be massive, if they succeeded. The Kingsmen needed such blades to do their work. But they’d failed. The problem had seemed insurmountable.
I reached for my notebook and opened it, checking my work one final time. The calculations hadn’t been that difficult, although I’d had to adapt some of the runes to adjust for modern-day materials. Whoever had come up with the original swords had been a genius, as well as a Zero. The network of runes that channelled magic into the blade had to be precise or the spell would simply refuse to work. Thankfully, I’d learnt the value of precision long ago. My sisters had enough power to compensate for deviations - often very big deviations - from perfect spellforms, but lesser magicians needed to be precise. Not that it mattered to me, in any case. I could speak a spell perfectly, with all the accent on the right syllables, and nothing would happen.
And yet, I can forge Objects of Power, I reminded myself, as I picked up the etching tool and held it over the sword. I am unique.
I’d forged the etching tool myself, as tradition demanded. I wasn’t too sure if it mattered - the harmony most magicians experienced when they used tools they’d crafted themselves was alien to me - but it wasn’t a tradition I wanted to abandon. Forging had given me a sense of purpose, of achievement, a long time before I’d realized what I could do. And besides, it kept my mind off uncomfortable truths. There were things I didn’t want to think about, even now.
Bending over the sword, I carefully pressed the etching tool against the metal and carved out the first rune. The metal was softer than it should have been - the silver cradle made it easier to carve, although I didn’t pretend to understand why - but I still moved with immense care. I didn’t have time to start again from scratch, not when I was due back at school in a couple of days. Besides, I wasn’t sure what would happen if I melted down the sword to reuse the metal. In theory, it shouldn’t make any difference; in practice, I wasn’t so sure. I’d seen forging go horribly wrong because the metal had already been tainted by magic.
The first rune fell into place, neatly. I took a moment to catch my breath - sweat was already trickling down my back - and then started on the second. My calculations insisted that the magic wouldn’t take effect until the last rune was in place, but I kept a wary eye on the blade anyway, just in case. A surge of magic that seemingly came out of nowhere would be dangerous, not least because I couldn’t sense the surge and take cover until it was too late. As far as magic was concerned, I was the blind girl in the kingdom of the sighted.
My hands were aching by the time I’d worked my way through a dozen runes. I stepped backwards, taking a deep breath. Magicians who forged Devices of Power claimed that the work couldn’t be paused, once it was underway, but I’d never had a problem when I’d forged Objects of Power. I rather suspected that my lack of magic actually kept the runes from activating early, too early to let the spellforms take shape properly. It was something else I intended to test, when I had a moment. Rose and I would have a lot of fun testing the limits of my abilities.