Chapter 43: Magnetism
The needle was still embedded in the ceiling when Aestrith told Tam she needed to rest, and the fact that it had not fallen yet suggested it had been driven in with more force than Tam likely realized.
Tam didn’t move out from the bed. Her posture and the slackness in her shoulders gave Beorn enough information to confirm her state. She looked like someone who had spent everything she had without planning, and now had nothing left to muster.
She nodded once, accepting the instruction without argument. Then Beorn told her her work duties were suspended for the time being, and her expression changed before she could fully suppress it. Her eyes moved down to his hands, then back up to his face in sheer panic. She was already missing the four silver per month of her salary.
"I have a different job for you," Beorn clarified. "After you’ve slept."
She kept watching his face, searching for confirmation or contradiction, trying to determine whether this was a reassurance or a deflection.
"You don’t lose the room," he said. "Or the pay."
The tension in her face eased at least. She released a small breath, then lowered herself back onto the bed with care, as if managing the last of her strength.
Her arms rested at her sides, and she did not move again.
He stepped into the corridor and pulled the door closed behind him.
Pam was waiting with her back against the wall and her arms folded across her chest. The stance wasn’t for show. She had chosen to wait for information rather than interrupt to obtain it, and was ready to pressure Beorn for it.
He gave her the essential points one by one. Tam needed rest. Her position at the citadel remained unchanged. Her work would be different going forward. He would explain the details once Tam had recovered enough to participate.
Pam watched him the same suspicion she had from the doorway earlier, trying to gauge not only what he said but what he chose not to include. She said that was fine, but the pause before the answer indicated she was not fully satisfied.
He was already moving before she had finished speaking.
Aestrith kept pace with him through the workers’ wing without asking where they were going. By then, she already knew when him had an idea in mind, and had to put it on paper.
By the time she stepped through the office door, he was already at the desk with the charcoal moving across the ledger.
She stopped just close enough and focused on what he was sketching.
The flow of the marks gave her immediate information about his state of mind. When he was working efficiently, his notation remained clean and minimal, only what was necessary to preserve the schematics. When he was uncertain or concerned, the marks became tighter, more rigid.
These were different. The lines spread outward in multiple directions at once, branching rapidly from node to node. New connections formed even as she watched, the sketch expanding faster than she could accompany.
He was mapping a system that did not yet existed on this world.
"What are you doing," she said.
"Tam’s power is magnetism."
"Great. And what that means," she said, clarifying that observation alone didn’t help.
"Everything that responded to her movement was iron," he said without looking up. "The casting frames in the foundry are iron. The rocking beam of the engine is iron. The piston rod, the valve housings, the pipe sections we have been casting. The mine cart rail systems I intend to install for reclamation work. All iron."
She pushed off the doorframe and stepped further into the room, following the implication even if the terms were foreign to her.
"So."
"She can exert force on all of it."
Aestrith moved to the window and crossed her arms, shifting to a position where she could think without distraction. The pale afternoon sky stretched beyond the glass, and the Scar cut across it in the way it always did.
The environment was stable. The variables were not.
"She will join me in the foundry?"
"Eventually," he said. "Before that, we need to make sure she can use her power safely."
He added a note in the margin.
"She also needs a functional understanding of what the foundry does and why each component matters."
"Uh huh. Congratulations on finding your second engineer." Aestrith said.
"Don’t be jealous now, you can be the senior engineer," he said.
She snorted, ignoring his teasing and let that information sit for a moment, considering it against her own experience.
He continued writing, the charcoal moving without pause.
"I have a bad feeling this is just the start," she said.
He turned to a fresh page. The charcoal slowed slightly but did not stop.
The schematics expanded again, now covering more variables than a single industrial problem required. The marks spread wider, touching multiple domains at once.
She watched it develop but could not yet determine the conclusion it was building toward.
"What you told me," he said, "about the initial phase. It looks like some sort of sickness, but standard treatment fails because the underlying cause is different."
Aestrith turned her head from the window.
"Yes."
"Tam experienced that weeks before we realized it." He kept his focus on the page. "You explained what happens past that point."
"I did."
"I doubt Tam is an isolated case." He adjusted the sketch, adding another branch. "There should be others in this city currently at that same stage. And after that stage."
Aestrith went stiff, processing the implication.
He continued, his voice lower now, closer to how he spoke when reasoning through a problem alone.
"Ashmark has a large population and Dunvarre’s anti-sinbound policy has been active for generations. The result is obvious, individuals with this condition hide it to avoid being hunted."
He paused briefly, thinking of the conclusion.
"Yet hiding does not resolve the condition. You confirmed that."
"It only accelerates deterioration," she said.
"Yes." He turned the page. "Now consider the settlements. The Badlands beyond Ashmark’s outskirts. Those are the locations individuals in that situation would move toward."
He looked up at her.
"I want to find them before they reach the stage Tam approached. Then offer them the option I offered you."
Aestrith remained at the window, looking at him. The silence before her response had weight like never before.
"Beorn, recruiting one or two Sinbound is one thing," she said.
"Yes?"
"But what you are talking about is far more dangerous than that."
"I know," he said. "If word gets out, the population itself might riot and lynch me."
He turned back to the page.
"But that’s just because they are ignorant. Sinbound powers are unknown to them, and it’s human nature to fear the unknown. The disasters that they can cause are no worse than the technology we can invent."
"It’s not the same," she said. "You know it."
"Precisely because I know it that I see no point in this taboo," he said. "We humans can invent ways to kill each other you can’t even fathom, Aestrith. It’s not because someone can plaster me with gravity or skewer me with an iron rod that I’ll fear this power. What makes it a disaster or a blessing to society is the user, not the ability."
She turned back to the window.
He continued working through the unknowns. How many. Where they were distributed. How to identify them without exposing them to risk. What resources would be required.
The margins filled with questions, each one a gap in the model.
He set the charcoal down.
He looked at her.
She exhaled through her nose, long and unforced, the kind of breath that signaled a shift in perspective.
"When you met me," she said, "I had a plan to ransom you to the steward."
He did not respond.
"Funny how things change," she said.
A small smile appeared briefly, then disappeared just as quickly.
She turned back to the window, returning her attention to the horizon.