Magic Binds (Kate Daniels 9)

I pulled the rope. The attic ladder dropped down. I took one of the beers from him and climbed up the steps. He followed me. We crossed the finished attic, where we kept our supplies, to a heavy steel door. I unlocked the two bars securing it and stepped out onto the side balcony. It was only three feet wide and five feet long, big enough to comfortably put two chairs. From this point we could see the city, the hustle and bustle of the street below, the traffic on Ponce de Leon, and beyond it, the burned-out husks of skyscrapers, falling apart a little more with each magic wave.

I took one chair; he took the other.

“Nice,” he said, and drank the beer.

“I like it. I like to watch the city.” I’d had the balcony and the attic ladder installed two months ago. When Jim found out, he had called me. He worried it was a security risk. Jim wouldn’t worry about anything related to me anymore. When a ten-year-old friendship shattered, the edges cut you.

My father drank his beer.

“What was Shinar like?”

He put his beer on the wooden railing and held out his hand. I touched it. A golden light rolled over the city below. I had expected crude, simple buildings the color of sand and clay. Instead beautiful white towers rose before me, drenched in greenery. Textured walkways led up terraces supporting a riot of flowers and trees. Sparkling ponds and creeks interrupted open spaces. In the distance a massive building, a pyramid or temple, rose, the first tier white, the second blue, the third green, topped with a shining gold sun symbol. People of every color and age strode through the streets. Women in colorful flowing dresses, in plain tunics, in military garb, carrying weapons and leading children by the hand. Older kids running, waving canvas bags at each other. Men in leather and metal armor, in robes like the one my father wore, in finery and a couple nude in bright swirls of red and blue body paint, some clean-shaven, some with a few days of scruff.

“No beards?” I said. Sumerian civilization was the oldest on record, and men on the few artifacts that survived always had full, curly beards.

“It came into fashion much later,” he said.

“It’s not what I expected.”

“It was called the jewel of Eden for a reason. I remember the night it fell. That tower with the red roof was the first. I ran out in the street and tried to hold it up and couldn’t. The magic simply wasn’t there. One by one, the buildings collapsed in front of me. Thousands died.”

The first Shift, when the technology wave had flooded the planet.

“Do you blame yourself?” I asked.

“No. None of us had any idea that such a thing was possible. There were no theories, no warnings, no prophecies. Nothing except for the random reports of magical devices malfunctioning or underperforming. Had we known, I’m not sure we would’ve done anything different. We were driven by the same things that drive people today: make our land better, our lives safer, our society more prosperous.”

The vision died and my Atlanta returned.

“I can rebuild it,” he said.

“I know. But should you?”

He looked at me. I took my hand away and pointed at the mouth of the street. “Several years ago, a man walked out over there and demanded everyone repent in the name of his god. People ignored him, so he unleashed a meteor shower. The whole street was in ruins. Looking at it now, you would never know. People are adjusting.”

“The car repair shop, those squat, ugly shops? That one repairs pots and sharpens knives. What does that other one do?”

“They make shoes.”

“So a tinker and a shoemaker.”

“People need pots and shoes, Father.”

“It’s hideous,” he said. “There is no beauty to it. It’s rudimentary and ugly. There is elegance in simplicity, but we can both agree a man with a thousand eyes couldn’t find elegance here at high noon.”

My father, master of witty prehistoric sayings. “Yes.”

“I can teach them beauty.”

“They have to learn it themselves.” I pulled out my spare knife. “Tactical Bowie. Hand forged. The blade is 5160 carbon steel marquenched—cooled in a molten salt bath—to strengthen the blade before being tempered. Ten-and-three-quarter-inch blade, black oxide finish. Long, slim, very fast.”

I pinched the spine of the blade with my fingers at the hilt. “Distal taper. The blade thins from hilt to tip. About six and a half millimeters here.” I moved my fingers to the tip. “About three and a half at the tip. Makes the blade lively and responsive. Pick up a sword or a knife without a taper and it will feel clunky in comparison.”

I touched the spine at the point where the blade curved down. “Clip point. Looks like a normal blade with the back clipped a bit. This clip curve is sharpened. If I’m pulling out this knife, I’m fighting in close quarters. This blade profile allows for greater precision when thrusting. It’s a wicked slicer, but it’s an even better stabber. This knife is one single piece of steel. The guard, the hilt, and the blade, all one piece. Simple paratrooper cord for the grip. You wanted elegance in simplicity. Here it is, Father.”

I passed the knife to him.

He held it up and studied it.

“There are countless generations between a simple flint blade and this knife. There is metallurgy, years of experimentation to get the right kind of steel, not too brittle, not too soft. More years to properly temper it. Chemistry. Craftsmanship. Secrets of forging the blade, passed from parents to children, read in books, practiced. Men died for the geometry of this knife. Their deaths helped to refine it into the perfect weapon. This knife represents a wealth of knowledge. But you want to take a big step and simply circumvent the learning process. If you gave this knife to a Cro-Magnon, he would appreciate it. But he wouldn’t know why it worked so well. He couldn’t reproduce it. Even if you taught him how, he would make lesser imitations of it. All that wealth of knowledge would never be acquired.”