It sounds like they still haven’t figured out what’s causing all the trouble, including that stone that fell from the ceiling. I listen and don’t ask questions.
I interrupt only when I notice I have one coffee left. “Where’s Professor White?” I ask, glancing around, and I realize she’s missing.
“She’s at the top. She’ll want her coffeehot,” says the woman in the tweed jacket, tilting her head toward the stairs.
I don’t have to be told twice. The arguments fade as I make my way up. Professor White doesn’t seem to notice my arrival. Her back is to me, and she’s muttering to herself as she flips through a book. When I clear my throat, she turns and shoots me an angry look. “Oh,” she says, her expression softening. “I thought you were one of my incompetent juniors who can’t tell a Greek from a Roman Doric.”
“Sorry, Professor White, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“No, not at all.” She gratefully accepts the remaining coffee and pastry, making certain the sugar doesn’t fall on her clothes.“This is just what I needed,” she says, sighing. “How did you know how I take it?”
I stammer over an answer. I don’t think I should tell her I caught a whisper of it in one of the other architects’ thoughts. “Uh, one of the architects downstairs mentioned it,” I lie.
There’s a flash of an impish smile on Professor White’s lips. “I imagine the team is still arguing down there.”
“Nottoo much,” I say.
This time for sure Professor White knows I’m lying and chuckles. “You don’t have to defend them. I have half a mind to wonder if they’re not trying to undermine each other on purpose.”
“Anything I can do to help?” I ask.
For what feels like an eternity, Professor White stares down at me, and I offer her a small, hopeful smile, wishing I’d remained silent. To my relieved surprise, she juts her chin toward a leather-bound folio resting on one of the balustrades.
“You may peruse the binder, if you’re so inclined…” she says, watching me as if her gaze can pierce my thoughts, revealing what I’m made of. “Though I wager you already know what I’m thinking.”
“No, I’m not—”
She quiets me with a raised hand. “No need to worry. Your secret is safe with me.”
I’m too excited to say anything, not even a thank-you.
Before she can change her mind, I flip open the book and riffle through the notes. Pages upon pages of arcane analysis and theory, schematics and diagrams, all of them signaling that there’s a misalignment somewhere in the tower. Finding it, however, has proven elusive. After all, the building is enormous, almost three hundred feet tall, and the issue could be anywhere.
Professor White places her fists on her hips, inspecting the stone ornamentation and embellishments, all of it covered in pigeon waste and feathers. “If you need me,” she says, “I’ll be dealing with the cacophony downstairs.”
That’s code fordon’t bother me unless it’s necessary. I’ve only known Professor White for a week, but I understand this much: She doesn’t like to be presented with a problem unless there’s already a solution. I’ll try to find one. This is what I’ve always wanted, right? To prove my worth.
She leaves me to go over the notes, and I walk the scaffolding, mulling over every detail, every design. My head swims with arcane geometry, and the desire to know it all practically burns a hole right through me. In the vastness of the space, sounds echo off the stone walls in unexpected ways, making it seem like my own footsteps are following me as I walk. So I find a place that is quiet, and I breathe deeply, grounding myself in the space.
There’s a hint of something in the air. It’s a sensation similar to the one you might feel when entering a room someone’s just left. There’s a faint energy or, rather, the ghost of it, lingering in the space. Like a ripple on a pond.
I reach for the building with my mind, the way I would if I wanted to feel a person’s thoughts. I’ve never tried to read a building, so it feels like I’m moving a new muscle. I open my mind, and when I do, I sense it: the disharmony. Where there should be equinumerosity, equipollence, equipotency, there is disparity.
This isn’t like when I read people. There’s an immediacy about their energy. This…this is something older and stranger. I’ve never been able to sense the energy of a building before. But this isn’t any old building. When Professor White first brought me to Arches, she’d mentioned that the original architects hadharnessed the spirits of the natural world to build it. Maybe I’m sensing those same spirits, hearing the latent energy of their sleeping consciousness. It’s like I’m in the belly of a great, sleeping beast.
I’m hit with how natural this is to me, how easily I sense the imbalance in the fabric of magic. It’s like I’ve always known it was there. Just like math, it’s always existed, but now I have the equation to understand it.
I candothis. I really can.
The ancient spirits talk, their words distant and unintelligible. I follow the sound. In the southeast corner a few levels up, there is a place where the voices howl in dismay. The source. The stone here isn’t visibly damaged in any way. But after inspecting it, I realize the problem isn’t here but on the small entablature above me, a decorated cornice that rims the interior of the tower like bracers.
To get a closer look, I would need to step off the scaffold and cross a thirty-foot drop.
I don’t even pause to think as I set the binder down, climb on the scaffold railing, grab on to a double-bellied baluster for support, and step off. There’s a brief moment where my stomach swoons, and I look down at the straight drop below me, then my foot touches the cornice, and I step fully onto the ledge. My heart pounds with excitement as I run my hands over the carvings in the frieze, feeling the lion, ivy, and snake designs in the stone with my fingers. The attention to detail here is incredible.
And that’s when I see it, or rather feel it, both magically and with my fingers: jagged marks. They seem recent. I have to lean my head over the edge to get a better look at them, and I realize they aren’t random marks. It’s a sigil in the shape of an insect. A fly, maybe. The magic imbued in the marks seems to buzz, too,droning in my head. I hate bugs, but I have to remind myself it’s not real, even though it sounds like it is.
“Professor White?” I call.
