A Weapon Too Free

Run to Ground

The ceiling was lost in a haze of smoke. Some of it was from the candles, to make up for what the twilight sun lacked. The rest was from the incense and alchemical burners on the workbench. Mannosett steered herself through all of it, upright and imperious. While she brushed everyone else aside, for Ursa she had a friendly smile.

"Watch closely," she told her, encouraging the girl to lean in further.

Mannosett picked up a small crucible with a set of tongs. Heavy leather gloves shielded her from the heat. She set the crucible down on a metal plate in the centre of the table. One of her assistants took the tongs and gloves away but Mannosett's eyes never left the little ceramic container.

Strewn across the workbench was the detritus of the procedure so far. What remained of the cloak was pushed to one edge, with the square hole that had been cut in it plainly visible. A scalpel was set at its side together with the scrapings of paint it had removed.

The powder in the crucible was all that remained of the square, heated until all the moisture had been driven out and the fibres themselves had collapsed into ash. It was, Mannosett had promised, the 'distilled essence of the cloak'.

At the back of the room, Essendra shifted uncomfortably. She hadn't felt like pushing her way through the crowd of Guild agents and hangers-on to get a better view. Crowds had always bothered her. She had ended up staying near the door, opposite Mannosett's other assistant, who just then gave her a friendly nod. Essendra's eyes still hurt. She supposed they were still red and bloodshot; she hadn't cared to find out.

Ursa, confronted with the Guild's alchemical laboratory, seemed to have forgotten her usual reticence and was staring in wonder at the shelves of mysterious bottles. Early on she'd elbowed her way to a workbench-side view.  Mannosett had indulged her. Essendra was reminded just how young the huntress was. Amongst all the bigger, older people she looked fragile.

One end of the workbench was taken up with a sheet of dark slate, already filled with chalked sigils. The incense sticks had been set at important parts of the figure. Mannosett used a small spoon to transfer the hot ash to the centre of the ritual circle. That completed, she set a clear pane of glass on top of it so draughts or careless breaths wouldn't carry it away.

Ursa was enchanted by the spectacle.

Mannosett's first assistant returned and put her forefingers and thumbs on the points of a square enclosing the ashes. Little zig-zags of magic sparked from them and ran across the ashes underneath the glass. The chalk lines glowed, briefly, then returned to normal. The smoke in the air rolled in strange currents. Magic liked its theatre.

"What happens now?" Ursa asked.

"If we have correctly aligned the spell with the previous owner of the cloak and not, say, its maker or someone who has handled it today, then it will find them anywhere within the spell's radius. Thanks to the special measures we have taken to increase its puissance, the effective range should be at least fifty miles," Mannosett said.

Ursa craned her neck towards the assistant, as if expecting to see a picture appear in the air.

"Found them?" her eagerness was obvious. The Guild agents, who didn't know her well, would have felt less like indulgent parents if they had known her eagerness stemmed from a desire to visit violence upon the target.

"Nothing," the assistant said.

"It's been a waste of time?"

"Not at all," Mannosett said. "We know the spell worked. We also know it's trying to find the correct person, otherwise we'd get an erroneous trace. Therefore our target was prepared for this kind of spell and weaved their own to counter it."