Chapter 22: Frederico – The Blue Book From Sátiron

Frederico emerged from under the locomotive with a piece of metal in his hand.

‘Look at the state of this piston.’

‘The Eliana has been exposed to nature for four hundred years,’ said the Old Woman. ‘You didn’t expect her to be in a good state, did you?’

A year had gone by since Frederico first saw the Eliana. The Old Woman, as promised, had aquired many books on train engineering. They were brought by a black, bearded man called Menior. Just like the Old Woman, Menior had more color in the shade of his eyelashes than all of Beloú on a sunny day. And the Eliana had more color in its rusty smell than all of them together. That train had flown to Tinsa and come back. The Eliana was the first train to cross an ocean. The rust on its mechanism was salty.

‘Where do you get all these books?’ Frederico asked Menior.

Menior took the piston from Frederico’s hand and took it to his black horse. He searched the bag attached to the saddle and found a metal component similar to Eliana’s piston.

‘It’s not exactly the same,’ said Menior, ‘but maybe it is possible to adapt this one to our train’s engine.’

Our train. In the beginning, neither Menior nor the Old Woman thought of the Eliana as anything more than a camp, a shelter, a safe place where rain and cold were kept at bay. Frederico compared both pistons.

‘If I extend this piece here,’ he pointed, ‘it should fit.’

He considered asking where Menior got those parts, but he was afraid of the answer. Frederico wasn’t used to all those colors hanging onto Menior and the Old Woman. They had power.

Frederico ran his finger over a page from the last book Menior had brought to him. He still read a bit slowly, but the Old Woman wouldn’t let him explore the Eliana’s mechanics until he had read his lessons with her. More than reading, she didn’t let him do anything before he had discussed, understood, reflected upon.

‘One of humanity’s greatest problems,’ she said, ‘is that people don’t want to think, they want to believe.’

When he went back to Beloú, Frederico took three books with him: two that the Old Woman had chosen, one on trains.

He read them hidden in the locked parts of the royal mansion of Beloú, where there were still lamps, albeit useless, and the old fireplaces he didn’t know how to turn on without sorcery. Being in those dusty rooms was like being somewhere ancient. In a way, it was ancient: at least four hundred years old. But it felt older. It felt like magic, like the Empire still existed, and one of the empresses still ruled over this part of the world. The extinguished fire in the useless fireplace warmed him against the cold despise from across the city wall.

‘Menior, there are a few parts that I can’t restore.’ He showed Menior the parts he meant. ‘Do you think you can get substitutes?’

Menior studied the parts, sketched them in his notebook, took down measurements, numbers of teeth, screws, and nails. During the year that went by, Frederico learned to sleep without nightmares. He didn’t dream, and the nightmare stayed in Beloú, together with the grey shadow that lurked in the Mouth of War. During that year, Menior’s beard stayed the same, but his hair, cut very short, began to surrender to the tides of his forehead.

‘I’ll see what I can get,’ said the black rider.

‘You must know a very good mechanic and blacksmith,’ said Frederico.

Menior closed his notebook.

‘If that is all for today.’ He took his leave.

Menior always left in a different direction. Frederico wondered what exactly he did. He had read history books under the Old Woman’s command, books about the Messengers of Sátiron and about spies and diplomats who acted in the name of the Empire, sometimes on the move, like Menior, sometimes stationed, like the Old Woman. In his imagination, Frederico painted them both as messengers from the old empire, preparing to conquer Franária and end the Unending War. He invented a whole net of spies, for sometimes, even in Beloú, he saw color. They hung on a woman’s hair, ran on the floor like tissue blown by wind, in alleyways. If all those colors belonged to people friendly to the Old Woman and Menior, there might be forces in action throughout Franária that nobody knew of.

The Old Woman beckoned Frederico to sit beside her. She had a book on her lap. Frederico pulled a face. He didn’t mind interrupting his explorations of mechanics but not to read about Satironese law. Anything but Satironese law. He went into the first wagon, in which the Old Woman had built shelves for the books they studied. Those books came and went, like seasons. Every time Frederico visited, old books were gone, replaced by new books. All but one. Frederico took it up.

The cover was blue and silky with drawings of a dense forest, all in tones of blue. The leaves sometimes opened up in small windows and in every window there was a creature. Here a frog having tea with a fox, there two wolves under the shade of a tree.

‘Why don’t we ever read this book?’ he asked.

‘It’s a book from Sátiron.’

If Frederico ever learned how to dream again, he’d dream of Sátiron. He learned from the books that Sátiron freed the world from the Dark Age. It was where the trains were invented, as well as the sorcery that moved them.

Frederico never quite understood what sorcery was. To him, mages and sorcerers were the same. When he said that, the Old Woman laughed.

‘To say a sorcerer is the same as a mage is like saying a kite is the same as an eagle. Listen, boy: mages are defective creatures. Magic flows through them as though it were wind and it had no skin. They can canalize it, shape it, but they often die while at it. A living mage is more magic than human.’

‘But they’re so powerful.’

‘And volatile. I’ll find a book about mages for you. Another one about mysteries, maybe. Someone like you should know more about the forces that make the world go round. For now, let’s study some law.’

But Frederico still didn’t know what a sorcerer was. He didn’t put away the blue book with mysteries on the cover.

‘If sorcerers also use magic,’ he said, ‘why are they to a mage what a kite is to an eagle?’

‘It was mage Fregósbor of Sátiron who invented sorcery,’ she said. ‘He made experiments with common objects to better understand mages’ deficiencies. Mages are always trying to find a way to cure themselves from magic. To make a long story short, he removed the skin from those objects. Magic began to flow through them, the same way it did with mages. Eventually, a normal person picked up one of those objects and discovered they direct the magic that flowed there, like water with a hose. That’s how the art of sorcery was born and common people learned to tap into the magic currents of the world. Like everything else that was impossible, it was born in Sátiron.’

The Old Woman took the blue book from the prince’s hands. She held it like she would have held a grandson.

‘Have you been there?’ Frederico asked.

‘In Sátiron? Never. It’s in the South.’

‘You mean,’ Frederico sat at the Old Woman’s feet, ‘you mean, the Frontier?’

‘No, boy, the Frontier is still Franária. Farther into the South.’

‘You mean,’ Frederico’s voice lost volume, gained intensity, ‘the Land of the Banished?’

They were silent, their thoughts lost in the distant South, running away to a time when trains crossed the skies.

‘Go home, boy, I’m tired.’

Indeed she looked older than usual.

‘But I just got here. And Faust needs more time without me. I think I’m a burden to him.’

‘Your brother is a fool just like your father,’ said the Old Woman.

‘That’s not true. Fulbert is a monster. My brother is a good man.’

The Old Woman made a sound between laugh and cough.

‘Faust won’t bring change. He might even be a better man than Fulbert, but he won’t be a better king. If we want to change the course of history,’ the Old Woman said, ‘we need to put someone on the throne who won’t do what everybody else is doing. Someone who doesn’t kill, who saves lives instead of taking them.’

Frederico didn’t like the course of that conversation. He said:

‘Clément of Deran doesn’t fight and doesn’t kill, but nothing has changed under his reign.’

‘To Clément, the throne is nothing but a plush chair. It is Adelaide who rules over Deran, and she has no scruples.’

The Old Woman insisted that Frederico should go home, get some rest. He shook his head and picked up the book on Satironese law.

‘I am home.’

Chapter 23