Miss Caris Dhemlan, heir to a landless baron title and her family’s plethora of patents, would’ve protested the inaccuracies if she was a student of Amari’s Aether School of Engineering, but she wasn’t. And since she—technically—wasn’t supposed to be there at all, she bit her tongue and furiously scribbled into her notebook so as not to miss a single point Professor Tristan Arquette was expounding on.
The amphitheater-style classroom was packed with students, but she’d managed to claim a spot in the back row for auditing purposes. Caris had given the school’s assigned guide the slip over an hour ago, and she hoped to finish listening to the lecture before anyone reported back to her mother that she’d wandered off.
Her mother was always so overprotective and had become more so since their arrival in Amari a week ago for the high-society season amongst the bloodlines. Why Caris couldn’t have debuted into high society back in Cosian was beyond her. No one back home in the Eastern Basin looked askance at her fitted day jacket and trousers as they did in Amari. Fashion was different for girls her age in the nation’s capital, it seemed, and it was glaringly apparent Caris was woefully unprepared to meet the social standards of the nobility out west.
She dug the nub of her fountain pen against the sturdy sheet of paper in her notebook, scowling at the airship engine diagram she’d copied down, with a few of her fixes thrown in. What did she care for the insipid gossips who only wanted a husband or a wife? Caris wanted tolearn, she wanted toinvent, not to marry someone more interested in her family’s growing wealth than in her.
She wasn’t eveninterestedin anyone, for stars’ sake. How could her mother expect her to like someone she knew nothing about after one measly dance?
“That’s a rather interesting fix you’ve drawn there,” the young man seated to her left said in a low voice.
Caris’ gaze slid sideways, taking in the speaker. She couldn’t speak about his trousers and jacket and whether or not they were of the current fashionable trend, but he was well-dressed. His dark blond hair was pulled back in a queue, and his brown eyes were on her notebook rather than the chalkboard the professor was referencing as he lectured. The curve of his mouth was kind.
“He cut the crystals wrong for that type of engine. A half cut is fine, but a quarter cut would get him quicker lift on a launch. He’d need to add another piston, though,” Caris said.
Those brown eyes flicked up to meet her gaze, curiosity in them rather than the condescending humor Caris sometimes faced when people didn’t know how many patents she owned at the age of sixteen. Clarion crystals sang, and Caris had been breaking down those songs since the first time her father had brought her to check on one of the filtration machines out in the Eastern Basin.
Caris knew how clarion crystals wanted to be cut. She always had. Their song lived in her like her magic did, for all that was a secret from everyone but her parents.
“How do you know?” the young man asked. He sounded curious, appearing eager to hear her answer.
Usually, older inventors who weren’t aware of her work history looked down their noses at her. His manners, however, were polite, and Caris found herself wanting to answer his question. Most days she preferred machines over people, but she made an exception for him.
Caris tapped the capped end of her fountain pen against her notebook. “Everyone thinks you need a clarion crystal to power an engine, which, yes, it does that, but the engine isn’t the important bit, it’s the crystal.”
Because the underlying mechanics would be relegated to steam power without the aether. Steam power had its place and was widely in use, but progress was never attained by sticking with the status quo.
“Most people would say the engine is more important. Even magicians can’t channel the aether without their wands.”
Caris shrugged one shoulder. “Most people would be wrong.”
It wasn’t the place for her to get into another argument about how one needed to listen to the clarion crystals and pick out which ones would work best with each invention. They needed to harmonize with the machinery, the same way they needed to harmonize with a magician’s wand. Caris had learned to love her music lessons as a little girl only when her teacher revealed she’d be better able to carve a crystal once she could read the notes it sang.
She’d never mastered the piano, but shehadmastered her father’s crystal-cutting tools.
“All the inventors in history who’ve built what we use can’t have been wrong,” the young man said.
“Then they’re simply uninspired.”
He smiled at her words, seemingly amused. “Well said.”
His agreement startled her, and Caris ducked her head a little to hide the flush that came to her cheeks at his support. She spent the remaining ten minutes of the lecture sneaking glances at him that he returned. He was handsome, but more than that, she wanted to know his opinion on the lecture.
Professor Tristan Arquette captivated her attention just as much as the young man seated beside her in those last few minutes. The professor knew what he was talking about when it came to engines. Caris absently wondered if she could apply his ideas to the next generation of filtration devices she and her father were engineering.
“Next week’s lesson will be on calculating the size of an airship around the engine you build,” Professor Arquette announced at the top of the hour.
He continued with a brief summary of what to expect and what chapters he wanted the students to read. Caris jotted down the name of the book the class was reading, wondering if she’d be able to order it from the bookstore back home. The students around her started to pack up their things and bustle out.
“Caris Dhemlan,whatare you doing?”
The sound of her full name said in that tone had Caris snapping her head up and around. She stared wide-eyed at where her mother stood at the end of the row with two representatives from the Aether School of Engineering.
Baroness Portia Dhemlan was a petite woman, with the same brown hair as Caris, though it was styled in a more sophisticated manner than Caris’ loose waves. She’d undone her twist after escaping her minder, the carefree style allowing her to blend in as a student more easily.
Portia’s gown was simple but well-made, without the embellishments prone to a woman of high society in Amari. The dress set her apart from the students, clearly marking her as an outsider.
“Mother,” Caris said with a wince as she snapped her notebook closed and tucked it away into her small satchel.
