Broken Homes

outside the door – loudly and a quarter tone flat.
    The globe exploded like a water balloon, splattering me, the bench and the surrounding floor. Nightingale, who had become wise to my peculiar aptitude with exploding formae had been standing well back and wearing a raincoat.
    I glared at Lesley, who struck a pose in the doorway.
    ‘Got my voice back,’ she said. ‘Sort of.’ She’d stopped wearing the mask inside the Folly and, while her face was still ruined, at least I could tell when she was smiling.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘You always sang flat.’
    Nightingale waved Lesley over.
    ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re here. I’ve got a demonstration and I’ve been waiting until I could show both of you at the same time.’
    ‘Can I dump my stuff first?’ asked Lesley.
    ‘Of course,’ said Nightingale. ‘While you do that, Peter here can clean up the lab.’
    ‘It’s a good thing it was water,’ said Lesley. ‘Even Peter can’t explode water.’
    ‘Let’s not tempt fate,’ said Nightingale.
    We reconvened half an hour later and Nightingale led us to one of the unused labs down the hall. He pulled off dust sheets to reveal scarred work benches, lathes and vices. I recognised it as a Design and Technology workshop, like the one I’d used at school, only stuck in a time warp back in the days of steam power and child labour. He pulled off a last sheet, under which was a black iron anvil of the sort I’ve only ever seen falling onto the heads of cartoon characters.
    ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Lesley?’ I asked.
    ‘I think so, Peter,’ she said. ‘But how are we going to get the pony up here?’
    ‘Shoeing a horse is a very useful skill,’ said Nightingale. ‘And when I was a boy there used to be a smithy downstairs in the yard. This, however, is where we turn boys into men.’ He paused to look at Lesley. ‘And I suppose young women into women.’
    ‘Are we forging the one ring?’ I asked.
    Nightingale held up a walking stick. ‘Do you recognise this?’ he asked.
    I did. It was a silver-topped gentleman’s cane, the head a bit tarnished looking.
    ‘It’s your cane,’ I said.
    ‘And what else?’ asked Nightingale.
    ‘It’s your wizard’s staff,’ said Lesley.
    ‘Well done,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘The cadwallopper,’ I said, and when Lesley raised what was left of her eyebrow I added, ‘A stick for walloping cads.’
    ‘And the source of a wizard’s power,’ said Nightingale.
    Using magic has a very specific limitation. If you overdo it your brain turns into Swiss cheese. Hyperthaumaturgical degradation, Dr Walid calls it, and he has some brains in a drawer which he whips out at the slightest excuse to show young apprentices. The rule of thumb with brain injuries is that by the time you feel anything, the damage is already done. So a practitioner of the arts tends to err on the side of caution. This can cause tension when, for the sake of argument, two Tiger tanks emerge suddenly from the treeline on a rainy night in 1945. In order to be the hero of Boy’s Own Weekly and still have an intact brain, a sensible wizard carries a staff in which he has personally imbued a great deal of power.
    Don’t ask me what kind of power that is, because the only thing I’ve got that can detect it is Toby the Dog. I’d love to stick some high vestigia material into a mass spectrometer, but first I’d have to get myself a mass spectrometer and then I’d have to learn enough physics to interpret the bloody results.
    Nightingale took his walking stick over to one of the workbenches, unscrewed the top and clamped the stick part in a vice. Then, taking a hammer and chisel, he cracked it along its length to reveal a dull gun-metal blue core the thickness of a pencil.
    ‘This is the heart of the staff,’ he said and fished a magnifying glass out of a nearby drawer. ‘Have a closer look.’
    We took it in turns. The surface of the core had faint but distinct ripples of shade that appeared to spiral up its length.
    ‘What’s it made of?’ asked Lesley as she looked.
    ‘Steel,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘Folded steel,’ I said. ‘Like a samurai sword.’
    ‘It’s called pattern welding,’ said Nightingale. ‘Different steel alloys, forge-welded in a deliberate pattern. Done correctly it creates a matrix that retains magic so that a master can draw upon it later.’
    With a great saving on wear and tear of the brain, I thought.
    ‘How do you get the magic in?’