“And to be honest, there’s not a lot of people doing work between the fall of Rome and Edward the Confessor. Some, but not so many.” Farran scrunched his nose up. “Some of them are not very easy to be around, either.” He’d met a few. One of the things about his work was getting invited to a range of parties of people who wanted to talk about their latest discoveries or their collections or both. “All right. How do we go forward?”
“Look, let me put out the notes I can share.” Vega considered, then moved a small table over. “Still smaller than a breadbox, but possibly a plate or something like that, rather than something worn. Or possibly something worn.” She went on, going through each point deliberately, which Farran appreciated. But it also seemed a more orderly way of managing information than many artists he’d met so far, no matter their art form.
“And this, here, is that an indication of materia?” He tapped one particular symbol. “I don’t know that one.”
Vega flushed. “It’s not terribly common. Meteoric iron. Maybe gilded, but they’re not sure.”
“Higher chance of rusting if it’s not.” Farran said, automatically, then he looked up to see her seem startled. “Er. Is that, did I say something wrong?”
“Not the reaction I expected?” Vega hesitated, then moved to sit down on the sofa, still a couple of inches away. But here she could look at the papers if she needed to, without bending over.
Farran considered her age, the fact he hadn’t heard her name in any of the usual places. That could mean she was using a stage name, but she appeared in various public records before she began singing. He’d checked, like Vivian had recommended. “You didn’t attend Schola, I think? Where should I start with the materia explanation?”
That, somehow, made her relax a bit, visibly. “I had a thorough education in the subject, privately. My family. Begin where you like, and I’ll ask questions.”
“Well, meteoric iron has a number of properties similar to terrestrial iron, but the balance of the ores. Much more nickel, as I understand it. Not my specialty, mind.” Farran shrugged slightly. “Uncle Cadmus likes a bit of blacksmithing, though I don’t think he’s ever tried that. Anyway, I know it’s much softer, it won’t take an edge well unless you alloy it with something that will, or do a lot of work with it. Possibly magic. The temperature is a factor.”
Vega was staring at him by the end of that explanation. “How do you know that much?”
“Part of my job? Oh, not meteors, yet. But identifying metals, yes. One thing I turn out to be surprisingly good at is getting a sense for the materia of an object. Of course, I can’t just tell someone that a piece is a fraud, based on that. There’s no way to prove it on my word. Even the truth-telling magics wouldn’t help enough, they’d just confirm I thought it was true. But it means I can get a feel for an item, and then do the research more efficiently to prove what I already know.”
She blinked at him now, as if he’d done something unexpected. Not bad, it wasn’t that kind of reaction. And besides, Farran had got a little more comfortable talking about this the last few years. “I know someone who can tell you the publication date of a book within a three year period, just by picking it up. Odd but amusing party trick, but also very helpful given he specialises in books.”
“What if something’s been rebound?” Vega asked it, as if she were thinking about other questions.
“He stares at his hand and looks rather confused, and then he sorts through which bits go together. The faces he makes are particularly good when they kept the book boards, of course,especially if he can’t actually touch them. A core of something older, the newer binding...” Farran gestured at the pile of notes. “The problem with your question is there is a great deal of possible material to sort through. But if it is meteoric iron, that feels different.”
“Tastes different, I’m told by someone.” Vega said it without explaining. “All right. Could we begin with that premise, especially if it’d help us narrow things down? Be open-minded about other options, too, but we have to start somewhere, right?”
“And it is a large, venerable, and busy city.” Farran leaned back as he thought through the implications. “I think so. If you can give me a couple of days, I can probably put together something that will make it easier to sense that or, mmm. Make that louder? That’s probably the metaphor. A soloist, not one of the supporting chorus.”
Chapter 17
THAT AFTERNOON
Vega sat back at that. She had not expected him to attempt to put whatever it was they were doing in her particular idiom. And he was not doing badly at it. He’d do better, she suspected, if he weren’t working solely off her public face. The way Farran went about the world intrigued her. It wasn’t the same way her family would, but it had a deliberateness that she liked. And he didn’t hurry over the details. Though, she presumed, an interest in the visual and tactile sorts of art objects would encourage both the details and taking time.
“A charm, then, or a ritual, or something of the kind? Or do you have a different method?” She considered, then poured some more tea for herself, and a little more for him when he nodded.
“I was thinking of something you could carry in your hand. I haven’t done it recently, but we’ve used something similar at home, for spotting the places in a house that are having problems before they’re visible.” Farran spoke about itcomfortably, but Vega realised he hadn’t said much about where he lived.
“In Trellech? Or no, you’d said Oxfordshire.” She searched back through her memory, but she hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the chat that happened. Social lubrication, one of her aunts called it.
“My family’s had a home for centuries, a few train stops from Oxford. Quite a large place, with two side wings, plus the family wing. It’s called Thebes, the family tends toward appropriate names. My Uncle Cadmus, my father was Cilix.” He shrugged. “My parents died before I went to Schola, and Uncle Cadmus—” Farran paused, the sort of pause that meant there was something complicated coming. “I mentioned we took in lodgers. It was a help paying the bills. But it also meant that both of us, and Lena, our housekeeper, got quite good at that sort of thing. Listening to the house and the property. Where the wood is rotting, that that railing really needs to be replaced.”
Vega nodded slowly. “And that applies to this sort of thing, too?” She gestured at the maps.
“Well. That’s the part where having more to narrow it down is helpful. You said your family thought it was made around 588 now. And that there’s that alignment with Jupiter and Uranus in Aries. Those are particular definitions we can use for the charm. You probably know that?” He looked up, and Vega found herself looking into earnest blue eyes. She could not tell, not for all the music in the world, whether he knew who her family was, what her family was. Or if he was just that dedicated and determined and earnest all the time.
Only her training as a performer made it possible for her to match that mode, at least well enough to get by. “Private education, again. But we did talk about thaumaturgical definitions. So you’d do something with, oh, the sigils for the planets and the zodiac sign, and all that?” Questions were saferthan statements, on the whole, especially when she didn’t know what he knew.
“Exactly. I’m no particular artist about it, but I can do a bit of inscription on silver or copper. Enough for this, at any rate. Whatever we could define reasonably. Oh, I’ve done one when I was going to a market, with all sorts of shops, things that might be antique but weren’t, actually. That sort of tool helps you sort out the fakes fast so you don’t waste time on them. Or Master Philemon knows someone who has one tailored for ancient Egyptian artefacts, where there are a lot of fakes. If you get very specific, and you’re willing to have a whole set of them— they take some particular storage— you can do them for specific materials, combined with time periods or places of origin.”
Vega let out a small breath. “So here, we know when it was made, within a few decades. We know where it was made, at least within the city. We know what it was made of, enough, and that’s rare enough to actually be a useful filter. We know it’s more likely been underground than not, but we probably don’t want to assume that’s where it is now.”
“And so we can narrow down millions of items to something a good bit more reasonable. The problem is, though, getting near enough to feel the pull. Or hear it. Or whatever sense we’re using here, I think I’ve got tangled.”
It made her laugh. “Which do you prefer, when you’re not being polite and putting it in my mode?”
