“I see,” Julius said. “They’ll pull the needle right to them. That way, even if we have to go off course, we’ll always know which direction the mages are in.”
“Yes, thank you,” Marci said, giving him a beaming smile. “At least someone here gets it.”
Justin rolled his eyes, but Julius moved in for a better look at the golden ball. This close, he could actually see the points in the tiny golden patterns twitching, exactly like little needles. “That’s amazing. I’ve never heard of a Kosmolabe.”
“They’re incredibly rare,” Marci said. “Even back when mages were thought to be common, not many places had the sophistication needed to make one, and once the magic dried up, the knowledge was lost all together.” Her face fell. “Most magical learning was, actually. The only reason we know dimensional connection is even possible is because Kosmolabes exist. We’re only beginning to rediscover just how much we lost during the magical drought, and we still don’t why the magic went away in the first place. Thankfully, we have our ancestor’s tools to help us figure everything out again.” She smiled down at the golden ball in her arms. “This one’s a Persian Kosmolabe. They’re supposed to be the most accurate, and the most delicate. It’s a miracle this one survived so perfectly intact. It might just be the last fully functional Kosmolabe remaining in the whole world.”
“Uh huh,” Justin said. “So why do you have it?”
Marci jerked at the question, then she relaxed, shrugging with the sort of careless flippancy that was the hallmark of someone about to tell a whopping lie. “My dad gave it to me. Anyway, like Julius said, this Kosmolabe should be able to guide us right to our target. Once I figure out how to use it, of course.”
“You mean you haven’t tried it yet?”
Marci lifted her head high. “Well, obviously I haven’t had the chance to test its ability to find missing mage colonies, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.” She looked down, peering into the golden patterns like she was trying to read her future in a crystal ball. “Actually, I think I’ve got something already. Follow me.”
She got to her feet and set off down the walkway, her boots clacking on the metal grate. When Julius stood up to follow, though, Justin grabbed his shoulder.
“You sure about this?”
“No,” Julius said. “But coming down here was your brilliant idea, remember?”
“I’m not talking about the sewers. I’m talking about the part where your human just lied to us.”
Julius blinked. He hadn’t actually thought Justin would pick up on that. His brother didn’t usually do subtleties, but then, Marci was a pretty awful liar.
“She probably only lied because you asked her such a nosy question,” he said. “Anyway, it’s not my business where she got her Kosmolabe. All I care about is how Marci does her job for me, and so far, she’s been excellent. When it comes to magic, I trust her completely.”
His brother snorted. “You’re gonna get yourself killed thinking like that. Blind faith makes a terrible leader.”
“It’s not blind faith,” Julius said. “I trust Marci. She’s my…”
Justin went after his hesitation like a bull after a red flag. “Your what?”
“I trust her,” Julius said again.
Justin crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?”
Because she was his friend, and because she trusted him back. But Justin was too much of a dragon to understand that, so Julius said nothing, which of course, his brother took entirely the wrong way.
“Oh, no,” he groaned. “You’re not having a thing with her, are you?”
“Of course not,” Julius snapped. Not that having a thing with Marci would be bad, but… “I just trust her, okay? Leave it alone.”
He stomped away, leaving his brother to follow. For a moment, the metal walkway was silent, and then, with a long sigh, Justin jogged after him. His brother quickly matched and then beat his pace, leaving Julius to run alone behind him through the dark.
Thirty minutes later, the Kosmolabe had led them up, down, and over more disgusting, slime-covered, bug-riddled pipes and tunnels than Julius ever wanted to see again in his life. Even Justin was starting to look a little green. Marci, however, was practically skipping in delight, all her earlier fear completely replaced by the dazzling sparkle of the Kosmolabe.
“It works!” she cried yet again, nuzzling the golden ball with her nose. “I knew you would work, you beautiful darling!”
“Works nothing,” Justin snarled, shaking something unmentionable off the toe of his boot. “We’ve been walking for half an hour, and we still haven’t seen so much as a Keep Out sign.”
“It works perfectly well,” Marci said. “It’s not the Kosmolabe’s fault your mages decided to hide in the one drain that apparently doesn’t connect to any of the others.”
“But why do we keep going down?” Julius asked, stepping over a stagnant puddle. “It would be one thing if we were going in circles around a fixed point, but we’re not. We just keep heading lower.”
Marci shrugged. “That’s where the signal goes.” She tapped her heel on the dank cement floor. “There’s an enormous magical concentration right below us. It has to be our mages. Nothing natural could generate pressure like that. I mean, just look at it.”
She held the Kosmolabe out for them to see, but while the gold leaf flecks were indeed all waving like tiny flags in a storm, they didn’t seem to be waving in any particular direction. Julius imagined it would look different if he focused on seeing the magic instead of the physical reality, but since physical reality was the one that was going to soak him with disgusting water if he slipped, he kept his attention on the real world.
“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “So we’re closing in. What’s the plan when we get there?”
He directed the question at Justin, partially because he needed to know, and partially to prevent his brother from snipping at Marci again. He’d taken to playing peace-keeper for the last quarter hour just so he wouldn’t have to hear them bicker, and he’d quickly discovered that the key to keeping harmony between his mage and his brother was to keep each of them focused on their respective jobs. Fortunately, both Justin and Marci were highly distractable when it came to their areas of expertise.
“Recon comes first,” Justin said, drumming his fingers on his sword hilt. “We need to know what we’re up against. Once we’ve got that, we make a battle plan from the information and proceed from there.” He glanced back at Julius. “I’ll do the actual fighting, of course. The way you’re panting like an old woman, you’d probably just give yourself a heart attack.”
“I am not panting like an old woman!” Julius protested, albeit breathlessly. This hike through the pipes had been a lot more exercise than he was used to. “I’m just a bit out of shape.”
“I can’t tell you ever had a shape to start with,” his brother said, giving him a caustic look. “Seriously, what happened to you? You used to be the fastest of all of us, but I think even Jessica could run circles around you now. Did you completely stop training when you exiled yourself to your room?”
More or less, Julius thought with a sigh. He’d hadn’t liked combat training even back when he’d been relatively good at it, and once he’d turned seventeen and his clutch had been declared ready to enter the world, he’d seen no reason to continue. This was especially true living at home since the nature of combat training meant it had to be done in the same gym used by the exact hyper-competitive, aggressive older siblings he’d hidden in his room to avoid. Before he could think of a more flattering way to explain his lapse to Justin, Marci’s voice rang out down the tunnel.