Chapter 11 (part 2/2) - Magic Circles

  Without hesitation, Vincent packed his books and rushed toward the Magical Circle Workshop. Lily had to leave soon for an expedition, obviously because of the massive debt she had taken on recently. When they arrived, they found a sober, undecorated wall. Several pallets stacked with sacks of clay sat beside a simple wooden gate. The only other access to the workshop was a service window where scholars and other resurrects submitted large blueprints to be commissioned.

  Lily skipped the line and knocked directly on the door. The receptionist noticed her and signaled toward the inside of the workshop, anticipating the arrival of a magister.

  The door opened slowly, revealing a man with skin as dark as clay, sturdy, thick-necked. He was not much taller than Lily, but his aura marked him as someone competent, and his clothes, stained from work, made it clear he was the master of the workshop.

  “A magister? If you need to commission something, you can use the window. Unless that is not what you are here for…”

  Then the man’s eyes shifted to the boy standing beside her.

  “Ah, now I recognize you. You must be Magister Lily.”

  They had already built a reputation on those levels of the tower. Many scholars had witnessed what happened that night.

  “What can I do for you?” He asked with caution.

  “Well… I was wondering if you could give him a posi-”

  “I am looking for an apprenticeship.”

  Vincent cut in quickly, extending his hand even though the man had not offered his own.

  “I am Vincent. Since my awakening I have been reading everything I can about magic and its techniques. I could not help being fascinated by magical circles… they are definitely one of the noblest arts this tower has to offer.”

  Faced with such assertiveness and flattery, the man shook his hand on reflex.

  “Hmp. Dodoon, master of this workshop… You say you are looking for an apprenticeship? I am sorry, but I do not have time to…”

  “You do not have to teach me anything, and you do not have to pay me. Just being near the place where circles are made is enough. I want to be part of the process. I am good with my hands, and I can clean if you want.”

  “Hmmm…”

  Dodoon studied him, while Lily stayed silent, realizing that Vincent had far more persuasive power than she did.

  “I suppose we could use a sweeper… it does not pay much.”

  “Thank you for the opportunity.”

  Vincent shook Dodoon’s hand again and invited himself into the workshop. Lily remained behind, looking nervous, as if she had just left her child on his first day of school. Vincent waved goodbye before the door closed and this new stage of his life began.

  Inside the workshop there were four other people besides Dodoon and the receptionist, but none of them paid much attention to a husk. A pair of workers turned the clay on their lathes to shape the disks, another fired the finished pieces in a kiln, while yet another filled the engraved grooves of the disks in a corner of the room.

  Dodoon handed him a broom and returned to his work, using a large compass mounted on a metal arm to engrave a circle.

  “Do your thing. We can pay you with food or with a stone, but do not expect real compensation for now.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Vincent wanted to walk straight over and watch what Dodoon was doing, but the dirtiest area was near the clay-turners, so he had to start there. The disks Lily had given him were raw, still soft enough to carve. This was where they were made.

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  I could ask them for a bigger disk as payment… I wonder if they will let me use the compass…

  The next step was embedding the flux. The clay did not need to be fired yet for that, but the carved grooves were filled with a shiny metallic wax, a flux that, once heated, formed a kind of cable.

  The circles Lily had shown him were only embedded with flux. They were much simpler, but these here looked like real circuits.

  “May I clean here?”

  Vincent asked politely to the worker handling the kiln, who nodded without much interest.

  Other mages must send their raw circles here to be finished…

  These disks were enormous, ranging from the size of a vinyl record to others nearly a meter across. They didn’t follow the logic Vincent had seen in the books, likely because they were experimental. Many of these circles would crack or fail to function even once. Each one needed its own internal logic and the correct engravings to channel magic properly.

  After finishing the dirtiest area, he finally managed to approach Dodoon.

  “Do you need help with anything?”

  “No. Do not touch anything, do not move the table, you will ruin the calibration.”

  Dodoon said this with his nose buried in his notebook, not even looking at Vincent.

  “So, proportionally speaking, that line should advance 3.2 degrees and then go inward one nineteenth…”

  He grabbed a nearby abacus to do the calculation.

  “With a radius of… that should be 2.75 cm…”

  He wrote it down in his notebook.

  Good to know they also use centimeters here… but why an abacus? Is there nothing more modern?

  “What are you making, sir?”

  “Shhh. Do not distract me.”

  Dodoon hushed him while rotating the metal arm of the compass by 3.2 degrees and then drawing another line toward the center.

  “I am optimizing an already functional circle someone commissioned… nothing a husk could do. If you have nothing else to clean, come back closer to nightfall and I will find something for you.”

  “I can help with the calculations.”

  Dodoon raised an eyebrow and gave Vincent another look.

  “You? You know how to use an abacus?”

  “Of course… just tell me what you need.”

  He already doubted him just by seeing the husk clothing, so Vincent did not give him time to refuse. He took the abacus and signaled with his eyes for the next calculation.

  “Fine… look at my notes then. This is the perimeter of the ring we are working on. I need the real distance if it travels 2.7 degrees… divide this number by…”

  “I understand, do not worry.”

  Vincent quickly moves the beads on the abacus. He could do the math mentally, but he used the abacus so as not to raise suspicion.

  “Would be 5.4 cm.”

  “Yes?”

  Dodoon grabbed the abacus and checked the calculation. He looked slightly pressured by the fact he could not do it as quickly as Vincent. When he finished, he seemed genuinely impressed.

  “Well look at that… you can use it. Fine, you can stay here. If you are useful, I will talk to have you transferred.”

  Until they actually pay me, I have no idea if this is good or bad for me. Though I will probably earn more than sweeping. Still, I am not planning on paying off my debt through labor… I want the freedom to read, but I will deal with that later.

  Work progressed much more smoothly thanks to not having to stop every few minutes to calculate, putting Dodoon in a far better mood for conversation. While working on the circle, Vincent managed to absorb some slightly more advanced techniques, but as he did, another question weighed more heavily in his mind.

  “Sorry if this sounds ignorant… but is it not possible to use magic for all of this? I mean not just the circles, but the math too. The numbers.”

  “It is not possible to use magic directly to make the circles, since when you create the lines, they disconfigure while you draw them. Besides, magic is not good for something so precise…”

  “And for mathematics?”

  “Even less. I know there are worlds where all magic stems from mathematics, but they have not brought enough resurrects from there for us to truly understand it.”

  “What about enchanting the abacus so it gives the answers?”

  “Are you worried about losing your job? Ha. Do not worry, I do not use those things… they are immoral.”

  Immoral? What is he talking about?

  Noticing Vincent’s expression, Dodoon realized he did not understand.

  “I am talking about knowledge jars… they are not banned because they are useful, but if you know how they are made, you have no scruples if you use them.”

  I wonder what they could possibly consider immoral in a tower that resurrects people and forces them to work against their will…

  “Those jars are cursed, I am telling you. They are a trapped soul, stripped of everything except the specific knowledge that makes them useful. They cannot handle anything too complex, but you basically shout a question into the jar and it answers. The ones for calculations are the most popular. Supposedly they do not make many of them. They are relics from the previous era, and only convicts were used in the process… but every major merchant uses them, and they are never in short supply...”

  Vincent froze for a moment.

  “Relax, they are not going to turn you into a jar, haha, do not worry.”

  But that was not what stopped him. He was thinking.

  In this world, there is no simple way to do calculations… magic cannot replicate numerical precision. Pure logic, universal language… Euclidean math should be the same in every world…

  Vincent gave the circle they had been working on another look, its internal logic, its operational flow… it was something he could work with, something he could provide, a market need no one was addressing…

  I can work with this.