Arcus was doing his best not to be seen talking to anyone but Craib. He had just finished the food on his plate when he caught sight of someone unexpected. The man did not hide his displeasure as he too spotted Arcus and made his way toward the boy. The very sight of that man made the anger he had buried beneath coals bubble up like molten rock inside him.
Lecia Raytheft had come to the aethometer’s launch party with her father, Joshua. She had been to magic salons and parties hosted by the aristocrats who lived in the capital, but never had she been to something so large-scale as this, hosted in the palace and with the royal family in attendance. That might have explained her mother’s enthusiasm. Celine had been rushing back and forth prior to the event, despite not attending herself. She had picked out a dress, made sure the maids dressing her daughter made her look absolutely perfect, and even selected a number of accessories that would really make a statement. Celine had even taken the opportunity to have Lecia’s older dresses retailored to fit her again. While that should have been reasonable, her mother’s enthusiasm made it feel excessive. Lecia’s outfit was perfectly coordinated from head to toe. When she examined herself in the full-length mirror, she felt several times prettier than she usually did before going to a salon or party.
Joshua’s traditional noble outfit was mostly red, and with the cane in his right hand, he looked as imposing as ever. The pair of them went around the hall greeting any guests they recognized.
Presently, they were listening to Craib give his presentation. The way he had his jacket draped around his shoulders, he looked like he was a general preparing his troops to go to war. However, he’d reined in his usual openness, speaking solemnly and assertively. He was making good use of his intonation to draw the listeners in. Lecia would not have expected the kind, hearty Craib to be capable of such perfect and calculated delivery. Needless to say, it elicited several gasps and impressed murmurs from the audience.
The presentation focused less on the materials and theory behind the aethometer, and more on what it could do and the results it had already achieved. The standards of magic technology in the kingdom were high enough already, but Craib’s explanation made it clear that this was on another level entirely. One of the points where this was most apparent was how the device had reduced the rate of mis-incantations. Your average magician would mis-incant twenty to thirty percent of the time. The aethometer reduced that to almost zero.
Suffice to say, the guests from foreign nations were likely more scared than they were impressed. Lainur’s magic troops were enough of a threat on the battlefield already without the aethometer making things ten times worse. Any thoughts of invading the kingdom should now have been wiped from their minds. Much like their domestic counterparts, the magicians from these nations were unbearably eager to get their hands on the device, so much so that they were losing their composure.
As Lecia listened to the presentation, she suddenly felt a presence at her back, but when she turned around, there was nobody there. Nobody, but something: the demon that dwelled behind her. It had been following her around ever since she’d released it from the cave in Raytheft territory, and would speak to her at every opportunity. At first, she had feared that it was a ghost, which unsettled her. However, it had never pulled any tricks on her and was actually rather friendly, so she’d gotten used to it surprisingly quickly. Moreover, it shared with her perceptions and knowledge that were otherwise beyond her, and recently she had been the more frequent instigator of conversation.
“I told you this wasn’t a bad deal,” it had said, prompting her to picture a smug grin of satisfaction. Perhaps it was a truly odious creature after all. Although, given how much she relied on it, she knew it wasn’t fair to say so. Either way, when it spoke to her, she responded in kind, but she was careful not to engage in lengthy conversations. Those around her couldn’t hear the demon’s voice, and she didn’t want to garner negative attention. She had already been careless enough times that her parents had recently urged her to break the habit of “talking to herself.”
The demon spoke to her then. “The aethometer... You’ve used one too, haven’t you?”
“Yes. And?” Lecia kept her voice down; there were too many people about—not least her father.
“The invention of such a device strikes me as strange. That’s all.”
“Strange in what sense?”
“Think about it. There’s no way a thing like that lies within reach of your country’s current technology. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible—there are archeological finds across the land that would suggest otherwise—but it’s definitely strange.”
Lecia didn’t understand its point. It seemed to pick up on this.
“The device contains denatured silver, right?”
“Denatured silver? I cannot remember it being referred to as such.”
“It’s definitely denatured silver. And yes, its use lets you measure the intensity of aether rays without other wavelengths getting in the way.”
“Is that so?”
“It is. That instrument gives you a numerical value based on how much the denatured silver expands in response to the aether’s waves. Aether rays change depending on the amount of aether released, so you’d only need to keep the silver’s rate of expansion fixed to use it for measuring purposes,” the demon explained. “But you would also need to undergo the delicate process of making compressed aether, which is necessary for the creation of denatured silver. And you can’t do that without a high-velocity magical amplifier. It’s weird that this thing was made first.”
It was quite normal for the demon to use unfamiliar words in its explanations, leaving Lecia relatively confused. It reminded her very much of listening to her brother—except the demon wasn’t nearly as patient and would change subjects without bothering to explain any details.