Chapter 12 – Small Fixes

It was a bit awkward to walk across campus with two bags, one clanging about, but she felt quite satisfied with how things had turned out. If she could get maintenance, or some guards that weren’t on the cloaked-people payroll to confront the spy, things would go so much better.

She slipped into Myrvite Ecology as quietly as she could, though she could see from Professor Viridian’s glance her way that he had seen her. For a moment, her heart raced, and she was deeply unsettled. A few hours ago, she’d watched him exsanguinating on the rotunda floor, having first lost all hope.

Mirian had missed the demonstration—the blackened gauntlet was sitting on the table next to the regal cordyline—but not much of the lecture. She sat at the back near the door, flipped open her notebook and tried to focus.

As the end of class approached, her heart started racing. As soon as the bells started clanging, she was out the door, holding the repair satchel tight to her body so it wouldn’t clank so loud. She looked down the corridor that led to the myrvite kennels. Sure enough, one of the cloaked figures had just finished opening one of the secure doors. She looked behind her.

Valen was looking, first at Mirian, then down the corridor.

“Did you see that?” she asked, as she had.

“How did you know that was going to happen?” Valen asked, which was not what she said the first time.

“I didn’t,” Mirian lied. Then, she thought of all the rumors Valen had spread, with not a single one she could ever trace back to her. “Well, I’d heard a rumor. Strange people breaking into buildings, and the Torrviol guards aren’t doing anything about it. Then at the end of class, I hear a weird noise and… yeah.”

Valen looked up at her.

“Do you think we should tell someone? It sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Who would believe us?”

Valen said, “Mirian, I wish I could figure you out.”

Which was not what Mirian was expecting her to say. “Me? You’re the weird one!”

To that, Valen let out an undignified guffaw.

“Look, if you want to tell Professor Viridian, go for it. I need to get to my next class.”

“You and your bag of copper bells are dismissed,” Valen said contemptuously, which was more like her usual self.

“Got it, oh short one,” she replied, and hurried down the stairs.

She had her Enchantments exam next. As she walked there, she remembered one thing that was absolutely critical: Do not sit next to that one girl. The good news was, they’d been using the glyphs that were on the exam constantly in the Spellbook’s class Professor Eld was running next quarter, so she expected to do quite well.

She’d gotten a D on the exam last time, but there was no way that was happening again. Mirian chose a spot well to the back of the class between two boys, since she had only the vaguest recollection of what the girl who had screwed up her exam looked like.

“Hey,” one of the boys said, and waggled his eyebrows, which made Mirian roll her eyes. She picked up her stuff and moved, because no way was she going to get accused of cheating by Professor Eld because some idiot couldn’t keep his mouth closed.

This time, she saw the blow-up that happened near the end of the exam from a distance. Some boy’s paper and pen both went flying. But Professor Eld didn’t dress him down, just snapped “get back to your seat,” and to the girl he said, “And don’t let it happen again.” Well that was unfair. If Eld was going to be a dick, he should at least be a dick equally. She finished, this time with a few minutes to spare.

Then, it was off to Artifice Design.

Before class started, she said, “Professor Torres, after my presentation may I leave class? There’s a leak above my dorm room, and maintenance said they were too busy to fix it, only I haven’t had time between classes and I don’t want it to flood my bed….”

Torres gave her a strange look. “That’s a new one,” she said. Seeing the bag of parts, she shrugged. “As long as you’re here for the other presentations tomorrow and Sixthday. Case studies and feedback cycles are critical to design improvement, and I do not want you to miss it.”

“Thank you,” Mirian said.

This time, she gave her presentation with only half the “ums” of last time, and impressed Torres by anticipating the first few questions. Then she was out the door, walking as fast as she could to her dorm. It was a long walk between the dorms and Academy, but there was no way she was dealing with a soaked bed again. It was far too annoying to be countenanced. If she needed more time on the repairs, she could skip lunch.

She nailed the plywood into the floor over the third floor hole. The tricky one was nailing one of the squares to the ceiling. That involved a lot of concentration and casting lift object while holding the plywood in place with a broom handle. A good mage might be able to sustain one spell while casting a second. She was not good.

It took her a bit to find the lever, which was actually hidden behind a panel in the wall that she had not realized was a panel. She dumped the storage tin of water out the window, then placed it beneath. A bunch of water dumped out as she undid the broken pipe, but not enough to overtop it, and only some of it sprayed across the floor. With no small sense of satisfaction, she sealed it with the melt metal scroll, which disintegrated as she finished. Scrolls did that. The discount ink and cheaper paper fell apart as energy leakage from the mana channeled through it, but it was serviceable for simple spells you only needed to cast once on the cheap.

Somewhere in the dorms, someone was swearing up a storm because their shower had just lost hot water. Mirian felt no sympathy, but she turned the lever back on. Then it was down to the second floor, where she used lift object to break open the lock. And it was broken, she realized. Oops. Well, she had made maintenance promise not to be mad at her, and also, no one was using the room anyways. With the last hole sealed, she was satisfied. It would at least last until everyone was done fixing whatever those spies were doing.

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The maintenance building was locked up when she visited to drop off the satchel. Probably on lunch break, she thought, and rushed over to the cafeteria herself to buy a quick lunch for a few coral beadcoins. Two of them got her a plate of shepherd’s pie and a bread roll. Thank the Gods for cheap food, she thought. She was absolutely famished. She’d missed breakfast, and the attack on the Academy had meant she missed dinner.

That thought gave her pause.

Did skipping dinner… count? Had the food she’d eaten before she woke up again in her bed followed her, or just the memories? After all, the wounds hadn’t followed her.

Well, it would have to be a philosophical question for another time. She finished scarfing down her food and headed off to Arcane Mathematics.

The lecture made a lot more sense the second time through. She still found herself asking questions, but she was starting to see what Professor Jei was getting at. She was trying to model the path that arcane energy actually took. But she wasn’t using three spatial dimensions as the coordinates. She was using four.

Mirian tried to visualize what that might look like. Professor Jei seemed to be able to keep it all in her head, but she needed to see it. She sketched out a few basic shapes, but got stuck on modeling a partial rotation. She could tell that a four dimensional path would only ever be visible in part from a single perspective. Worse, people couldn’t directly see pure arcane energy, though most spells bled some sort of light.

“Why model arcane energy as traveling through an extra spatial dimension,” she finally asked, when it was an appropriate moment.

Professor Jei’s eyes lit up. “Data,” she said simply, and for once, she smiled.