The Sorcery Code by Dima Zales and Anna Zaires

Chapter 34: Augusta

Chapter 34: Augusta

Approaching Ganir’s chambers, Augusta knocked decisively on his door. The old man had been avoiding her for the past couple of days, even going so far as to ignore her Contact messages, and she wasn’t about to allow this.

By the time the door swung open, Augusta’s temper was reaching a boiling point. Taking a few deep breaths to calm herself, she entered Ganir’s chambers.

“How are you, my child?” Ganir greeted her calmly. He was sitting behind his desk, apparently looking over some scrolls prior to her arrival.

“You said you would notify me when your men had some information,” she said bluntly. “It has now been several days, and I haven’t heard anything from you. Where do we stand as far as locating this creature? If your spies have been unable to find it, then I’m going to have no choice but to speak about this at the upcoming Council meeting—the one that’s happening on Thursday.”

Ganir sighed. “Augusta, you need to have patience. We can’t act in haste—”

“No, we need to act in haste,” she interrupted. “We need to contain this situation before it gets completely out of control. Did you, or did you not, learn anything thus far?”

He hesitated for a moment, then inclined his head. “Yes,” he said. “There is something that I want to show you.”

“Show me?”

The old man gestured toward a Life Capture droplet sitting in a jar. “It’s from one of my observers in Kelvin’s territory,” he said softly. “Blaise’s creation has been spotted there, at the market in Neumanngrad.”

Augusta’s pulse jumped in excitement. “Did your observer capture it?”

“No,” Ganir said. “That was not his task.”

“All right,” Augusta said, “so what happened? How was he able to find the thing?”

“You better see for yourself.” Ganir picked up the droplet and handed it to her. “Keep in mind, this is from a man who is a sorcerer himself.”

Augusta took the droplet and was about to bring it to her mouth when Ganir held up his hand.

“Wait,” he said. “Before you do that, I want you to start a new recording.” He pointed toward the Sphere sitting on his desk.

“What? Why?” Augusta gave him a confused look.

“I want to keep that Life Capture for more study,” he explained. “By you recording yourself using the Life Capture droplet, I will not lose the information that this droplet contains. Instead, I will get a new droplet that will include a few moments before you took the original droplet and a few moments after, as well as a recording of the original.”

Augusta stared at him in shock and amazement. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? The idea was genius in its simplicity. It was widely believed that the droplets were consumable—gone forever once used. But now it seemed like there was a way to use them over and over again. Why had the old man kept this to himself?

The implications were staggering. If nothing else, it could change the way sorcery was taught. All one needed to do was teach a group of students once and have them record the class via Life Captures.

Then the next class could be given those droplets, and their experiences would also be recorded—and so on. This would significantly cut the time each experienced sorcerer had to spend tutoring apprentices—a duty that Augusta particularly disliked.

Of course, now that she thought about it, it was not that surprising Ganir had hoarded this knowledge. Augusta had always suspected the old sorcerer of keeping secrets when it came to some of his discoveries; he took joy in possessing knowledge that no one else had. In this case, it appeared that he had misled others about the true capability of his invention.