The Office of Shadow by Matthew Sturges Read Free Book Online

begun, and was only now beginning to fill out under Ironfoot's auspices.
    "Coming along, Professor. I hope to have my section finished by
lunchtime." He beamed, patting his intensity gauge.
    Ironfoot scowled and took the gauge from him. "You're not holding it quite right," he said, demonstrating. "It needs to be held as far from the body
as possible, so your own re doesn't affect the readings. See?"

    The intensity gauge was something Ironfoot had developed in his own
student days, working under the Master Elementalist Luane, who had almost
single-handedly invented the field of inductive thaumatology. The instrument consisted of a brass tube, about the height of Ironfoot's waist, with a
silver tip on one end and a series of graded markings lining the outside of the
tube. Inside was a silver plate, opposite a plate of cold iron. In the absence of
re, the silver and iron plates nearly touched, their natural repulsion negligible. But when the tip was applied to an object or creature that was imbued
with the magical essence, the silver plate repelled the iron plate in proportion to the strength of the field, moving a needle along the graded markings.
Ironfoot was more than a little proud of it.
    He handed the gauge back to the student, who seemed relieved when he
and Armin continued on their way. He knelt to inspect a few of Beman's
readings: Each item, from the tiniest pebble to the largest section of wall, had
been marked with runes designating the direction and intensity of re
embedded in it. All food for the map.
    Once everything had been marked, all the data cross-checked and analyzed for errors, and the artifacts corrected for the many interlocking auras of
re that permeated any Fae city, then Ironfoot's work could begin in earnest.
Fortunately for him (though clearly not for the citizens of Selafae), the blast
that had destroyed the city was massive, its reitic force so potent that it had
nearly annihilated any background essence that existed in the city before its
impact.
    Ironfoot was eager to have this done. Eager to solve the problem and
move on. Solving problems was what Ironfoot did. The specific problem
didn't usually matter to him, so long as it was interesting and got him out of
the city. But this one was different. This one would linger.
    Once the map was complete, then, he would return to Queensbridge,
and would perform what he sincerely hoped would be the greatest feat of
investigative thaumatology to date: He would reverse-engineer the monstrous magic that had destroyed an entire city in an instant. He would recreate the Einswrath weapon using only its aftermath as a guide.

    And after that? Then what? Would anything seem as important after
this? That part of him that was the source of his anger and impatience was
singing to him again lately, as it had more and more often over the last few
years: time to move on.
    He and Armin continued their walk, listening to the sounds of the
instruments clinking against the rubble, and the light conversation of the
students at their work. Someone was singing an old, sad Arcadian hymn:

    The tune was haunting and lovely, and it struck Ironfoot that what he
was strolling through was not simply a project, not merely a research site. It
was a massive graveyard, a charnel house of unprecedented proportions.
Those white bits of debris scattered among the torn-up cobblestones were not
pebbles-they were fragments of bone.
    He left Armin with one of the students who had a question about an
anomalous reading and continued walking, careful not to tread on anything
other than dirt.
    Ironfoot was a scholar, but he had at one time been a soldier as well, and
these echoes of violence stirred thoughts of revenge and aggression that he
liked to believe belonged to his younger self. The drive to win that had never
quite left him. And there was no good that could come of thinking about
that.
    So he pushed it away, all of it. There was work to be done,