Free Council of Blades by Paul Kidd Page A

She ponderously maneuvered herself about and began to sidle past the obstacle, meanwhile fixing the hapless Lorenzo beneath her baleful eye.
    "Young man, you have my permission to continue with your duties-but pray, do not be long. The young lady has research of the utmost importance to attend to. The secu-rity of Sumbria itself may one day rest upon her work."
    The door closed with a titanic slam, leaving Miliana and Lorenzo to slump against the bookshelves in relief. The girl finally managed to peel herself away from the marble and wearily opened her speaking box; the sound of her own voice dragging its way through chapter seven-ty one, paragraph six: "Charges dovetail and counter dovetail and their acute relevance to social graces…" masked their conversation from eavesdroppers in the cor-ridor.
    Lorenzo half crouched, searching the wainscoting for signs of errant green furry things.
    "What's a hogfish?"
    "It doesn't matter." Miliana collapsed into a chair, remembered the charcoal mark on her backside, and decided that she didn't care. The girl wearily rubbed beneath her spectacles and massaged her eyes. "Now look-Lothario-"
    "Lorenzo! Lorenzo Utrelli…"
    "… Da tiddly-pom and tiddly-dee. Yes…" Miliana sud-denly sat bolt upright in her chair. "You picked that lock! You're not supposed to be in here."
    The young man-a handsome creature in an ink-stained sort of way-skittered aside like a nervous stick bug.
    "Yes I am! I'm a guest! I just… just… just didn't have a key…"
    "So you're a guest, are you?" Miliana vaguely remem-bered seeing the man before, but for the life of her she couldn't remember just quite where. "Well what do you want the library for?"
    "Study!" Lorenzo left a trail of soot behind him as he crossed the polished marble floor. "Sumbria has some of the best books there are. It must be terribly interesting living here."
    "That all depends on what you're allowed to do with your time." Miliana scowled, fixed her gaze on the intrud-er, and crinkled up her speckled nose. "Now, look-I'm not so sure you should be allowed in here."
    The young man never even heard her. He crouched forward to inspect Miliana's magical speaking box, his face glowing with rapturous fascination.
    "Oh-oh, this is wonderful! Superb!" Lorenzo turned to stare at Miliana with awe and excitement shining in his eyes. "Are you a sorceress?"
    Miliana almost said "no"-and then the tone of respect in the young man's voice brought her up short.
    She drew erect, preened like a heron, and attempted to act terribly, terribly wise.
    "Yes. Yes, I am, actually."
    "And so they actually make you study!" Lorenzo sat himself down in a cloud of cinders and dust. "Back at home, they've banned me from every library in town. They say I'm disruptive." The Lomatran avidly examined Miliana's arrangement of the box and speaking trumpet. "This is fascinating. Now, you see, this has bearing on some of my own studies. I am exploring the possibility that sound can be translated into peaks and waves."
    Miliana raised one eyebrow and peered at her com-panion through her pretty freckles.
    "How would that be useful?"
    "Ah-but perhaps it might be!" Lorenzo spread the drawing of a machine out across the table. "Here, you see? This machine uses a membrane to pick up sound, vibrat-ing as noise contacts the membrane. The vibrations make this needle jump and change the score written on this parchment scroll, which is dragged slowly past the needle by these little springs! Now all I need to do is somehow reverse the process, find a way of reading the jump marks on the parchment, and we can make a re-playable mechan-ical recording of any sound we desire." The young man puffed out his chest in pride. "You see? The job's half done!"
    Miliana leaned back in her chair and fixed her com-panion with a droll, sarcastic stare.
    "You must be from the country."
    Lorenzo instantly turned upon her a pair of eyes utter-ly alive with passion-a face so filled with fire that it welded the