“A brilliant mind may discover a thousand ways forward. Wisdom is knowing which paths ought never to be taken.”
— An Elune teaching
The first person to call Khepri a genius that morning was a child. The second called him a danger to public health.
Both had excellent reasons.
“It’s supposed to do that,” Khepri assured the people gathered at the village well.
The wooden wheel rattled on its axle. Beneath the frame, a pipe shivered with the trapped pressure of water and air. The boy standing nearest the machine regarded it with the suspicion usually reserved for snakes.
“Are you sure?”
“Entirely.”
Something snapped.
Khepri winced. “Mostly.”
Water shot from the copper release pipe and struck a merchant squarely in the chest. His basket overturned. Bright peppers scattered across the earth, and for a heartbeat the square fell silent except for the steady drip from his embroidered sleeves.
The child began to laugh.
Khepri closed his eyes. There were twenty people around the well, yet the machine had somehow chosen the one wearing the most expensive clothing. An impressive feat of precision for a device that could barely distinguish water from air.
“You!” the merchant bellowed.
“Yes?” Khepri pushed his round spectacles up his nose. A few short black twists had fallen across his forehead, and his dark, curious eyes regarded the furious merchant with considerably more interest than fear. For a slender ten-year-old with such an innocent-looking face, he had an extraordinary talent for getting into trouble.
“What have you done?”
“That,” Khepri admitted, studying the pipe, “is a very good question.”
The merchant advanced. Khepri considered whether explaining pressure regulation would improve the situation. Probably not.
“KHEPRI!”
Aunt Sẹ́ni came through the crowd with her travelling robe gathered above her ankles. Silver threaded the dark braids beneath her indigo headwrap, framing high cheekbones and keen eyes that missed very little. Ivory stitching edged her robe, and a bronze hoop hung from her right ear. Khepri would have recognised her from halfway across the settlement. He would also have recognised the expression that accompanied her arrival.
“Auntie. Perfect timing.”
“Is it?”
“An opportunity to witness a breakthrough.”
Her gaze travelled from the ruined pipe to the peppers and finally to the merchant, who looked as though he had been dragged out of a river.
“In what?”
Khepri considered. “Public bathing?”
The child laughed harder. Sẹ́ni did not.
“Apologise.”
“Auntie—”
“Now.”
Khepri faced the merchant. “I’m sorry. The excess water was meant to return to the well, not seek a new owner.”
“Your machine assaulted me!”
“An extremely fair interpretation of events.”
Sẹ́ni took a cloth from her satchel and offered it to the man. She promised to have his garments cleaned and made Khepri help gather the scattered peppers. Only once the merchant had gone, muttering about reckless children and travelling healers, did she turn back to the machine.
“What did you use to build it?”
“Wood. Some copper. A little brass.”
She pointed beneath the frame. “Is that the fitting from our medicine wagon?”
The polished metal was unmistakable.
“It was unused,” Khepri said.
“Was it yours?”
“That depends on how we define—”
“Khepri.”
“No.”
“Then you will return it.”
He gave the fitting a regretful glance. The water-lifter was still worth fixing. He had proved the wheel could hold the flow; the fault was in the release mechanism. Another afternoon, a better seal, perhaps a different valve—
Sẹ́ni folded her arms.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll put it back.”
“And the rest?”
“The rest?”
“Whatever else you have borrowed.”
“An alarming lack of faith in my restraint.”
“An extensive body of evidence.”
Khepri could hardly argue with that.
* * *
The Elune caravan stood beneath a great tree at the settlement’s edge. Its crown stretched across the road and over the cooking space, casting shade on the covered wagons. Dried herbs hung from their frames, and small birds with orange throats picked through the leaves above the medical tents.
Beyond the tree, the hills stepped down into a green valley. Farms followed their slopes. Waterfalls dropped from distant cliffs, and beyond the forests rose the neck of an enormous animal moving through the canopy.
Khepri stopped to watch it.
He had seen creatures like that before, and still the sight drew his thoughts beyond the road. What other animals lived farther into Tembara? What plants grew where the clan had never travelled? What useful materials lay waiting for someone curious enough to examine them?
“Khepri!”
“Coming!”
Travellers were already arriving for treatment. Some came on foot with bundles tied across their backs; others brought relatives in carts. An elderly farmer offered a sack of grain in thanks for a dressing changed that morning. The apprentice receiving it tried to explain that no payment was needed. The farmer left it beside the cooking fire anyway, with a blessing for everyone who had travelled so far to help. Physicians moved between the shelters, checking stores, heating water and speaking quietly with patients. The clan’s indigo and ivory appeared everywhere: on practical working coats, embroidered travelling robes, linen wraps, and the small earrings that marked each member of Elune.
Khepri knew the design as intimately as the tools he had grown up stealing time to examine. A smooth ivory bead. Three indigo threads. A slender bronze hoop. One earring, worn on one side.
His hung from his left ear. Root: learning, protected, not yet responsible for carrying the clan’s gifts into the world. Sẹ́ni’s rested on her right. Branch. She had earned the duty to carry that knowledge to others, as had so many of the healers around him.
He had once asked whether being unusually clever could qualify him to wear his on the right.
Apparently, the clan had standards that brilliance alone could not satisfy.
He found his aunt beside the main medicine wagon, closing a wooden instrument case.
“Did you return the fitting?” she asked without looking up.
“Yes.”
“The entire fitting?”
He reached into his pocket and set a piece of brass beside her case.
Sẹ́ni examined it. “This is half.”
“An improved half.”
“And the other?”
“Serving a higher purpose.”
She waited.
He sighed. “I’ll retrieve it.”
“Come here first.”
He approached expecting a lecture. Instead, she took his hand and held it still. His fingers trembled faintly.
“How much Chi did you use this morning?”
“Very little.”
“Khepri.”
“A reasonable amount.”
“Your reasonable amounts have left you asleep through supper three times.”
“The second was an experiment.”
“And the third?”
“A continuation.”
Sẹ́ni pressed two fingers against his wrist. A careful thread of Chi passed from her hand along his circulation, then withdrew. She had examined his Chi veins often enough that he knew the procedure, though he had not expected to be the patient today.
“Your control is better,” she said.
“I have been telling everyone.”
“But you force too much Chi through the channels when a design refuses to cooperate.”
“Then the design should cooperate.”
“The design is not the one whose arm aches afterwards.”
Khepri opened his mouth. He closed it.
She had noticed that, too.
“Your Spark gives you a way to build,” she continued. “It does not make you immune to the consequences of using it. You can replace the pieces of a machine. You cannot so easily replace yourself.”
“A tragic flaw in the human design.”
“One you will learn to respect.”
He glanced towards the instrument case, grateful when she turned to it instead of asking how long his wrist had hurt.
Inside lay devices that had passed through generations of Elune hands. Sẹ́ni took out a slender silver instrument with a small crystal chamber.
“What is this?”
“A resonance reader. It measures changes in Chi circulation through compatible materials.”
“And the fault?”
“The needle sticks when the current becomes unstable.”
She placed it in his hand.
Khepri turned it over, suddenly careful. The instrument had always been kept beyond the reach of his experiments. He had asked for permission to use one for months.
“Why?”
“Because it needs repairing, and I know you will do the work.”
“Really?”
“Under one condition.”
“There it is.”
“You will repair it carefully. No reckless experiments to prove how clever you are.”
“A devastating restriction on scientific progress.”
“Khepri.”
He looked down at the reader. Its silver casing was scratched, but the inner chamber was beautifully made. He could already see how he might improve the needle’s movement without changing the measurement itself.
“Thank you,” he said.
The words surprised them both.
Sẹ́ni’s expression softened. “I would rather give you something you are allowed to take apart than spend another evening searching the medicine wagon.”
“A remarkably sound investment.”
“Go and help with the stores.”
He slipped the reader into his satchel, then turned to leave. Her hand caught his collar.
“Your earring.”
“What about it?”
“One of the threads is coming loose.”
He felt for the bead. A fine strand of indigo had lifted from the ivory.
“I can fix that.”
“Without taking it apart, I hope.”
She straightened the thread herself, her fingers sure from years of smaller, more important work.
“Do you remember what the three threads mean?”
“Knowledge. Healing. Protection.”
“And the bead?”
“Life.”
“The hoop?”
“The bond that holds us together. Auntie, I know.”
“I know you know.” Sẹ́ni smoothed his collar. “There is a difference between knowing what something means and living as though it matters.”
That gave him more to consider than another warning about missing brass.
He touched the bead. Across the clearing, a physician helped an old woman settle beneath a shelter while an apprentice carried her medicines. Knowledge passed from one pair of hands to another. No instrument could do that work alone.
He looked back at his aunt.
“Does being a Branch mean I have to stop building things that explode?”
“Being a Branch means understanding why they must not explode.”
“An ambitious qualification.”
“Go, Khepri.”
He bowed extravagantly. “As the mighty Branch commands.”
She pointed at the supply wagon.
He hurried away before she could remember any additional conditions.
* * *
By afternoon the market had filled with merchants, travellers and children weaving between the stalls. From a bench beside the caravan, Khepri watched the movement through the magnifying lenses fixed to his glasses. His resonance reader lay open before him.
The fault was small enough to be insulting. Somewhere behind him, a healer called for clean water, and the answer came from three different wagons. A pot lid clattered at the cooking fire. He knew each of those sounds as well as the delicate ticking of the instrument in his hands. The clan never seemed to notice how much noise it made until someone fell ill and the work grew quiet.
Beneath the needle, a retaining ring had warped. Each time Chi passed through the instrument, the ring caught against its housing and spoiled the reading. A replacement required more precision than force, which meant there was little use trying to repair it with a hammer.
Khepri laid three thin strips of brass on the bench and extended his hand.
Chi answered the call of his Spark.
The metal loosened into motes above his palm, glinting as they moved. Assembly let him rearrange those fragments into a new form, but it did not relieve him of understanding the form he wanted. The first ring was too thick. He separated it and tried again.
The next was thinner, with delicate supporting braces. Better, but still heavy where the needle needed room to move.
He dissolved the pattern.
A pulse of discomfort travelled from his wrist towards his elbow.
Sẹ́ni would have called that a warning. Khepri called it an inconvenient interruption.
He drew the fragments into a third arrangement, correcting the inner surface until the ring settled into a clean circle. When he released the Chi, the finished piece landed on the bench with a faint metallic click.
He flexed his aching fingers.
The ring was not perfect. It was, however, much better than the broken part.
He fitted it into the instrument and tilted the case. The needle moved.
Khepri leaned closer.
It moved again, smoothly this time, responding to a carefully measured current rather than catching against the housing.
Success.
Not complete success. The reader still needed testing, and the case had yet to be closed. But the design worked well enough to justify his satisfaction.
He had just reached for a fastening screw when a young apprentice appeared by the road, breathless.
“Khepri!”
He looked up. “You’re interrupting a historic achievement.”
“There’s been an accident at the eastern crossing.”
The screw remained between his fingers.
“What happened?”
“The transport platform broke. They were bringing a farmer down from the upper terraces. He’s hurt, and the platform is stuck.”
“Is he conscious?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where’s Sẹ́ni?”
“Already there.”
Of course she was.
Khepri closed the reader as carefully as he could, dropped his tools into the satchel and stood. The ache in his arm had not yet faded, but there would be time to complain about it later.
“Show me.”
He followed the apprentice through the crowded market towards the eastern road.
The reader knocked against his hip as he ran. This time he barely noticed.