Chapter 47 – Dangerous Experiments

Once a week and never more. That was what Vyxara and she had agreed upon, and she had adhered to it with iron discipline so far, even though her fingers had been itching to finally try out the Eye with corrupted Essence. And today was finally the day.

She knelt down next to her desk and felt around for the right panel, deactivated the protective patterns, slid the panel aside, and pulled out the iron box.

The lid swung open, and there lay the Eye of Deceit. In the candlelight, the surface shimmered with that strangely oily sheen.

She placed the box on the work bench. Then she went to the locked cabinet on the other side of the room, released the protective patterns over that lock as well, opened it, and took out the small wooden casket, which she had additionally sealed with Vyxara’s dampening patterns and inside which lay the sealed vial containing the corrupted Essence.

When she placed it on the table next to the bronze cube, the iridescently shimmering liquid in the glass, which never seemed to be completely still anyway, suddenly stirred more vigorously, as if sensing the artifact’s proximity. Sluggish, viscous streaks trailed along the inner wall of the vial, as if something within the liquid were reaching for the bronze cube.

“That’s the orientation resonance,” Vyxara said in her head. “The inverted structure in the Eye and the corrupted Essence are on the same side of the symmetry and they recognize each other.”

“That looks a little unsettling, to be honest.”

“It’s a good sign, though. It means the corrupted Essence is pure enough to interact with the Eye’s patterns, which means that Hobkin’s contacts have delivered good quality. That’s not a given with black market characters.”

Valentina opened her bottle of ordinary Distilled Essence and set it down beside the others. “How do we begin?”

“With the probing pattern. The same procedure as in your first examination, and again, we need a very fine diagnostic thread. But this time, mix a tiny amount of corrupted Essence into the stream, along with the normal Distilled Essence. But tiny, little Weaver, about a ratio of one to twenty. And don’t open the vial until your probing pattern is in place and stable.”

Valentina nodded, concentrated, and began to build the delicate geometric structure of the probing pattern. Once the configuration was in place, she broke the seal on the vial.

The nausea crept up on her immediately and insidiously. She exhaled slowly and let a controlled stream of Distilled Essence flow through the probing pattern into the bronze cube, just as she had done several times before, before finally adding corrupted Essence.

The internal structure of the Eye of Deceit, which she had perceived in recent weeks as dense and incredibly complex with layer upon layer of intertwined patterns of so tight and so fine that she couldn’t tell where one began and the next ended, suddenly unfolded before her.

Like a sack of grain filled to bursting that is cut open, all the deeper geometric structures of the Eye suddenly poured out before Valentina’s eyes, revealing the principles and mind-boggling possibilities behind the secondary layer of perception that the Eye generated.

“That,” said Vyxara, and there was a certain smugness in the demon’s mental voice, “is the true power of the Eye. What Faustus did with it, that clumsy distortion of your perception during the Greystone Competition, that was roughly like using a windmill to stir a pot of soup.”

“How could the Rumenekamat build something like that thousands of years ago?”

“They obviously didn’t do it alone. It is the product of a very close collaboration between a human craftsman-weaver and a demon who guided him on this level of geometry. The craftsman provided the hands and the materials, the demon the understanding of the deeper structure. A bit like the two of us.”

Curious, Valentina went even deeper inside with her probing pattern and found something in the innermost layers that was practically of immediate use.

The secondary layer of perception could not only be projected onto a single target, but extended across an entire area, a zone in which every Essence Weaver’s entire perception was altered according to the user’s will.

Theoretically, this could be used to make the Essence patterns of an entire room invisible to any observer.

Her protective structures here in this room, both the conventional and the demonic ones, were good, but a sufficiently attentive Weaver standing outside her house and looking closely could at least perceive the conventional dampening patterns and conclude that someone inside was, if not hiding something, then at least capable of hiding something. But with the Eye, she could possibly also manipulate the perception of any observer so that they could detect nothing unusual at all.

Perhaps she could even start right now with-

But instead, she broke out of the probing pattern and let her gaze wander to the hourglass.

About an hour and a half had passed. Damn! That didn’t quite match her sense of time, but it wasn’t as bad as last time…

“Possibly because the corrupted Essence allows for more efficient interaction with the Eye,” Vyxara surmised.

“That’s good.”

“On the contrary, it’s dangerous.”

Valentina looked up from the hourglass. “Why?”

“Because lighter sessions might tempt you to extend them or perform them more frequently. And the cumulative effects on your perception are real, even if the time distortion is less pronounced. Convenience is not a measure of safety, Valentina. It just means you feel the costs less acutely.”

Sighing, Valentina picked up the bronze cube with the wax cloths, placed it back in the iron box, closed the lid, locked it, and reactivated the protective patterns. Then she sealed the vial containing the corrupted Essence and placed it in the wooden casket, closed it, wove the dampening patterns over it, and put it back in the cabinet.

Then she sat down at her desk and wrote down her observations in the coded shorthand she had developed with Vyxara for this purpose. And as she wrote, a deep sense of satisfaction spread through her, at understanding something that almost no one else in the world understood.

“This feeling,” said Vyxara kindly, but with an edge that made Valentina sit up and take notice, “the joy of forbidden knowledge, of a mastery that no one is allowed to see, is something you should be aware of. In and of itself.”

Valentina paused, her pen hovering over the paper.

“You mean it’s part of the cumulative effect of the Eye?”

“I mean that ensnarement and slowly but surely losing control don’t always have to take the form one expects. Sometimes they simply feel as though your competence and determination have finally found an outlet and a goal.”

“Duly noted.”

~

A few days later, Valentina sat in the large lecture hall and listened as Von Agrippin wrote the mathematical description of the barrier between Leb and Wazzer resonance on the slate, and after the session with the Eye in full swing, she had the feeling that for the first time she truly understood what he was actually after with this Grundgestalt theory of his.

After the lecture, the small cluster of students formed around him as usual, but Valentina remained seated in the fourth row, going over her notes. Or at least she pretended to, because she could feel his gaze finding her again and again while he answered Ignacio with a patience far kinder than Ignacio’s questions deserved.

When the crowd had thinned out and Ignacio finally, finally left satisfied, Von Agrippin came over to her. He climbed the steps between the rows of seats and casually sat down on the edge of the table next to her.

“How’s the restriction reduction coming along?” he asked without beating around the bush. “You’ve submitted your project to Whitehall, if I’m not mistaken.”

“It is provisionally approved,” said Valentina. “But the math for the stability analysis is proving more challenging than expected. Modeling permanent architectural patterns is a different problem from modeling temporary ones, and it’s a bit counterintuitive. Hand weaving is far easier. The timescales are completely different, which makes error prediction significantly more complex.”

He nodded, and then asked her a few questions that cut so precisely to the heart of her problem that she knew immediately he had actually been thinking about it. Valentina was stunned.

He seemed to notice her expression and smiled. “I asked Professor Whitehall about the details of your project, out of interest.”

“That, um, that makes me happy.”

Damn it, why had she said that? Vyxara giggled in her head.

“I would very much like to discuss the practical application of my work with you in more detail,” he said. “And especially the Greystone Cascade. I’ve only read about it, and as we both know, that’s completely different from speaking with someone who has seen it and worked on it themselves.” He gave her his half-smile. “Tonight, if you have time? I can have something decent served up in my quarters here at the university. At any rate, more decent than what they have to offer in the dining hall.”

“How subtle,” Vyxara remarked dryly.

Valentina returned his smile. “I’d love to.”

~

Her breath hung in little clouds in front of her face as she walked briskly toward Mill Gate Road.

“He wants to shag you,” said Vyxara.

“I know.”

“And he knows that you know.”

“And I know that he knows that I know. Can we cut this game short?”

“Your impatience and sudden excitement are extremely amusing.”

“As if you aren’t just as eager for it.”

“Of course. I can hardly wait.”

Valentina turned into the side street behind the cloth merchants and quickened her pace. “What interests me more is that his interest in my stability issue wasn’t feigned. He really thought about it, Vyxara.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt for a second that he’s at least as interested in what’s between your ears as he is in what’s between your legs.”

“And I like it that way.”

“It’s a dangerous combination, little Weaver. The men who only want your body are predictable, and the men who are only interested in your mind are boring. But a man who wants both, and who also has the ability to keep up with both…”

Valentina said nothing, but Vyxara wasn’t wrong, and the quiet tugging in her lower abdomen, which hadn’t stopped since his invitation, proved the demon right in a way that needed no words.

Back home on Pinfeather Lane, Valentina stood in front of the small mirror in her bedroom, pondering. She wouldn’t wear a court dress, no, that would be ridiculous for dinner at a scholar’s university quarters. She settled on a well-made red everyday dress and carefully braided her hair into a plait, which she draped over her shoulder and across her chest.

“Half an hour for a braid,” said Vyxara. “Don’t you think that’s a bit over the top?”

“Shut up, Vyxara.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Thanks.”

“Let me just that the red looks excellent on you.”