Chapter 25: Making Connections

“I’m pretty sure I can do it, but...”

I raised an eye at Maarin. I was starting to have second thoughts about hiring him to make my cell phone network. “You must really want more of my gold.”

He coughed, hunching slightly into his jerkin. “Be—be that as it may, there’s only so much I can do with the resources I have.”

I folded my arms. “So what do you have then?”

“I’m glad you asked!” Maarin quickly bustled into the back of his hole in the wall shop.

I sighed, glancing over my shoulder. Dee and Dum were with me again. I would have preferred Rel for company, but, well… that’s the problem with making your own plans. You have to actually carry them out.

“Think he actually has anything?” I asked.

Dee shrugged. “Dunno, Boss.”

“We could make him have something.” Dum cracked his knuckles.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Maarin half stumble back into the front of the shop. I gave a small little grin. “Now boys.” It was my villain grin, and believe me, I’d practiced. “We only do that to people who disappoint us. You wouldn’t disappoint us, would you, Maarin?”

The young man paled slightly, setting down several wooden rods on the counter with trembling hands. “N-not at all, Miss. Uh, in fact, I’ve already managed to make a simple prototype that does almost exactly what you wanted!”

“Then what was all this about needing more money?”

“I never said I needed more money… per se…” He waved his hands in front of him. “But if you want the enchantments to cover large distances, I’m going to need better reagents.

I hummed, looking at the assemblage on the table. He had four wooden dowels, two long and two short. One of each was sitting in a small wooden plank with holes carved into it. He set two more medium ones off to the side. “Did you carve the wood yourself?”

He gave a wary nod. “One must… as an enchanter. Working the materials is what puts our mana into it.” He paused a moment, before handing me the other short dowel. “If you would?”

I tilted my head, holding the rod up. “Testing, testing.”

“Testing, testing,” went the long dowel in Maarin’s hands.

Maarin blinked. "Testing?"

"Testing?" the rod transmitted back.

"Nevermind that." I grinned. "It works"

He let out a relieved breath. “Of--of course it works! I managed to link each of the rods to each other, that was the easy part.” He swapped out the long dowel in the wooden plank for one of the medium ones, then picked up the second medium dowel. “The harder bit was setting up the enchantment on the linking board,” he said into his device.

The rod in my hand buzzed. “The harder bit was setting up the enchantment on the linking board.”

I grinned. “So how does it work?”

“Uh,it starts here” He tapped his dowel into his hand and the sound reverberated into mine. “The enchantment on each rod captures the sound, sending it to the matching rod just like you suggested.” He pointed at the other dowel in the board. “It’s the board that has the enchantment to transfer the sound from one set of rods to the other. And then it replicates the sound in the final rod, just like I’ve, uh, demonstrated.”

“What’s the range?”

Maarin glanced off to the side. “About as far wide as my shop?”

I hummed. Not a good start, but now that we had a proof of concept, we could work from there. “Any thought to my enchantment relays to make it go longer range?”

“Yes… a few.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s what I needed to talk to you about more reagents for. That sort of enchantment isn’t quite something I can do with leftover pieces of wood and some glass.”

I raised an eyebrow. “There’s glass in this mess?”

He flipped over the ‘linking board’, showing where he’d set a small piece of foggy glass into the other side. “Glass or some other reflective surface is necessary for the reflection of the sound,” he said. “Without that, it would be difficult for even a master enchanter to make the rods do more than buzz.”

I clicked my tongue. Of course there would be a material cost to magic as well. So much for cheating outrageously.

I was still going to cheat normally of course.

“I also noticed you switched the rods out manually. Is there no way to make the rods automatically connect, either with a verbal or manual cue on the user’s end?”

He blinked, looking up at me. I held back a sigh. Come on, this was just simple cell phone protocol stuff. I hadn’t even started bringing in the browser features yet.

“No.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

“I’m very sure,” he said.

“So, you’re telling me, that if I took this little idea to the enchanter’s guild, they’d tell me it was impossible as well?” I leaned forward. Behind me, Dee and Dum leaned forward as well.

I could tell by how the floorboards creaked.

Maarin swallowed, before rallying. “I’m telling you that if you took this idea to the Enchanter’s Guild they’d laugh you out of town.” He frowned. “If you took this to the guild, they’d rip it out of your hands and run you out of town.”

I looked at him for a moment more, before leaning back with a smile. “Good to know.” I ran a hand through my hair, reassessing. “Guess we’re going full grapevine, then.”

He blinked at the non-sequitur. “Grape… vine?”

I chuckled. “Demons are useful for a lot of things. In fact, I’m guessing you haven’t been able to make a recording feature yet either?”

He shrugged. “Not really? With better materials I could manage something, but it would be tricky.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I waved a hand. “Instead, if I got you some… copper wire, could you make the linking enchantment use that instead of another piece of wood?”

Maarin blinked, before frowning down at his proof of concept. “How much wire?”

“Probably two or three feet?”

“How are you going to get three feet of spooled out copper?” He looked up at me, eyes wide. “Most smiths don’t even bother making the stuff.”

I patted him on the cheek. “You let me worry about that part, hmmm?”

“Uh, right, yes.” He took a step back, glancing away. Behind me, Dum chuckled.

I elbowed him in the gut.

Dee chuckled instead.

“I could do it!” Maarin missed the rest of our byplay. “It would actually be easier than using the glass, if the wire was burnished. But what are you thinking to do with it?”

“Imagine this.” I stood the dowels up in a row. “Put these on a wall, with a hoop of wire hanging over one. When you want to connect it to another rod, you just loop a piece of wire over that one, and when the person is done, you take the wire back down. Easy peasy.”

He blinked dumbly, mouth opening and closing a few times in quick succession. “Th-that’s!”

“Stop, you’re making me blush.” I took a step back from the counter. Really, I’d feel more proud of myself if I’d managed to come up with the idea on my own, instead of ripping it off. Standing on the shoulders of giants was all well and good, but fall off and you have to shank a few of them in the back of the knee to get back to where you started. “Can it be done?”

“Yes… yes it can! Uh, but…” He paused. “Who’s going to move the wires?”

“Remember when I said you let me worry about that?”

“Yes?”

“You do that.”

“Oh. Uh.” Maarin scratched his ear.” Alright.”

“Perfect.” I smiled. “Just… one more thing. I’ll need you to add something that will send a buzz to our little wall of connections, so that the operator knows when someone wants a connection. Oh, and while you’re at it, make it so the conversation can be listened to, that way the operator knows when to take the wire back down.”

“I… think I can manage something like that?”

“Think of it this way.” I drew a few lines into his dusty countertop. “One device is sending a sound to a… crystal ball or something, then the crystal ball sends it one to the other device. Simple, easy.”

“Does the part in the middle need to… send anything?” He asked slowly.

“Not at all.” I affected a much put-upon sigh. “It’s just the only good way to make sure someone knows when to take the copper wire back down. After all, even I can only manage to get so many of those.”

I was also… going to have to put a lot of points into Attunement and Soul to get enough mana for all of the demons I was going to need.

There had to be a gossip demon, right?

Right.

“So, what did you need me to get for you.”

“Oh, uh, yes.” Maarin scrambled around under his counter, before pulling out a rough map on parchment. “It’s for the connections that you wanted. I need something I can trick the enchantment into believing is the same object; that way we can have one enchantment that functions through multiple reception enchantments without the whole thing breaking… I think…” the last bit was muttered, so I ignored it for the time being.

“And this is the part where you tell me what you need, Maarin.” I rolled my eyes. “Enough beating around the bush. What is it? Blood diamonds? The tears of the fae? A virginity other than your own?”

“I… that’s—” He sputtered for a second, before looking away. “It’s actually… hummingbird feathers.”

I nodded, looking at his map. “Okay…” he didn’t say anything. “That’s it? Hummingbird feathers?”

“Yes…”

“And you can’t go to the guild for this because?” I held up a hand. “No, stupid question. I wouldn’t want them to know what I was doing anyway. Much better as a fait accompli.” I snagged the map out from under his hand. “How many?”

“As many as you… can get back with in one piece?” He managed.

I held back a snort. “I won’t damage your precious hummingbird feathers, Maarin.” I moved towards the door of the shop, before pausing, one niggling thought at the back of my head. “By the way, how big are the hummingbirds around here again?”

He made a hummingbird-sized circle with his fingers.

Well good. It would have been rather embarrassing to realize the hummingbirds in this world were the size of an SUV or something. Especially after laughing at him about it. I tapped Dum on the shoulder. “Go get Electra, tell her to meet me at the miner’s gate.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Dum wasn’t worried either, so really, how bad could it be?

I left quickly, Dee with me as Dum went back to the old docks. The two of us were stopped by a procession on the main thoroughfare, where a small group of people in silver plate armor were riding into the city. The crowd blocked us from passing.

I leaned over towards Dee as a group of guardsmen—their armor noticeably less shiny—came up to greet the new arrivals. “So who are these guys?”

“They’re the Watch,” Dee said.

“The Watch?”

Dee shrugged. “Big important people, never really heard much about ‘em. ‘Cept that they got a fancy tower on the North coast.”

I shrugged. “None of our…”

I paused when the leader of the watch pulled something out from under his cloak, showing it to the guardsmen.

“Boss?”

“The fuck are they doing with my armor?!”