fandomhighdorms | The Stables: Wednesday afternoon

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The Stables: Wednesday afternoon

Having no classes, Karal had spent the day working with Trenor. They'd finished, now, were just spending some time cooling down, when Trenor suddenly lifted his head, staring, every muscle tight and trembling.

"Easy, easy, Trenor, it's all right." Karal tried to soothe his horse, looking around to try and spot what had upset him. The only thing out of the ordinary was a slightly tacky statue at the edge of the preserve. "I did not know you were an art critic," he said lightly, trying to lead Trenor away.

The horse had turned into rock, hooves planted, refusing to budge. Karal just shook his head.

When, after several minutes, he still couldn't convince him to move, he reached up to cover both of the horse's eyes. It was only for a moment, because Trenor shook his hands off, but when Karal glanced back over his shoulder, the statue was gone.

Its absence meant Trenor was once more his old tractable self; Karal, however, was staring at the spot it had been.

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"Oh." He was beginning to hate that word. But he was making sense of it, now, and he quailed at how close that statue had been. "Sunlord."

He closed his eyes briefly, wanting to ask who'd been taken, wanting to run out and see for himself, but it wouldn't help. "How do we get them back?" he asked, a little shakily, but he made himself be calm as he opened his eyes. "What can I do to help?"

"I don't know," Evey admitted, worry etched in her features. "She just said not to go near them until we know more."

She pulled out some chemical fertilizer and a bottle of petrol.

"I'm not very good at sitting still, so I'm going after them."

Karal wasn't surprised for even a moment. "Then I'll help you," he decided. "I know nothing about explosions, but I can watch for you, and I am very good at following instructions."

She opened her mouth to stop him, but realized she wanted him to help, and just pulled out a pair of goggles for him. "If you're going to stay in here with me, I want you to protect your eyes," she said, offering a little smile. "I'm making very simple fertilizer bombs today, so it won't take me long."

He nodded, grateful she was letting him help, grateful for something to do, and took the goggles, turning them over in his hands before he figured out how to put them on. Before he did, though, he brushed his hand over her shoulder. "Thank you."

"Of course," she said, reaching up to touch his hand and trying to look reassuring. "It's not going to smell nice in here, but it really shouldn't take long."

She considered the ingredients before her. "These are what V used when we blew up Parliament. They should do the trick."

"An auspicious history," he said softly. "Let me just--" He grabbed a spare saddle blanket, soaked it in the sink, then rolled it and put it at the bottom of the door into the stable. "To keep anything from getting into the stable."

Karal slipped his goggles on, making a face at how they felt, then moved to stand near her shoulder, not crowding her, just there to help.

Evey nodded, smiling gently at him before carefully beginning to make little packets out of newspaper and load them with the fertilizer. "The petrol and cotton are going to react with the chemicals in the fertilizer," she explained quietly, working quickly. "Once we light them, anyway, but not before then."

"I had no idea fertiliser was so dangerous. I thought it was just for growing things." He kept his voice very low and quiet, not wanting disturb her concentration. "Do you need me to do anything?"

Evey bit her lip. "You can cut some fuses, if you'd like?" she offered, pulling out a length of shoestring and some scissors. "They should be about this long." She held her hands a small distance apart. "It'll afford us enough time to run after we set them up."

The only explosion Karal had ever seen were the fireworks Evey had shown him, but he knew what had happened in the boiler explosion in Valdemar. Time to run sounded important. "Altra could Jump us away, instead," he offered as he began to cut the fuses. "It would be safer."

"That would be handy," she agreed thoughtfully as she carefully began assembling the cotton and newspaper. "We put the bombs on the Tube when we did Parliament, so we were far off when they went."

Karal watched her as he cut the fuses, remembering what she was doing. "I don't know what a Tube is," he said softly. "And if we can make a show of strength, maybe they will stop taking people. Like scaring wolves off with fire. And if we can make them stop taking people, we will have time to discover how to retrieve them."

"Exactly. We have to stop them from taking more. I have to try. I can't not." Evey smiled, reassured. "Um, the Tube is the London underground train. The subway, if you know what those are."

"And they are safe where they are," he said quietly, adding a quick prayer to Vkandis that they would remain so. "I've even been on a subway, though just the once. It wasn't at all pleasant."

"Tends to not be," she said lightly, neatly starting to tuck the fuses into the cotton. "We just used the train to transport the bombs."

She sighed softly. "They're safe where they are. And they can't have more people."

"No, they can't." His voice was quiet but very definite. "If this is what we need to do to convince them of that, then this is what we'll do. Or you'll do, and I will watch," he added lightly.

If he'd known about Zoe's ban on anything of the sort, he might have felt differently. But he didn't, so the point was moot.

And Evey wasn't exactly inclined to reveal that tidbit. She didn't find it relevant.

"You can help," she promised seriously. "It's just delicate and I don't want you to get hurt. I'll teach you do these properly when this is all over, if you want."

"I'm not sure I want to learn." He thought of Natoli and the artificers and how useful something like this could be to them. "But I think maybe I should, if only so I can teach others."

"It's frighteningly simple," she promised, putting the finishing touches on the last of her small bombs. "Well, these are. The pretty ones I did are a bit more complicated."

"That makes sense. It's far easier to paint a wall than a portrait," he said, studying the devices for a moment before going in search of something to put them in.

He found an old box and started filling it loosely with hay. "And the fireworks were more like a painting than anything else."

Evey blushed lightly. "It's just chemistry," she said, almost shy. "I don't have any artistic talent."

"They were beautiful," he pointed out. "And they seemed like art to me, which would make an artist of sorts. You simply," he set the box very carefully on the table, "use a very unique medium."

"That's a way of putting it," Evey said, almost laughing at the idea before gingerly picking up one of the small bundles and tucking it in the box. "Will you come with me tomorrow to set these up?"

"Yes," he said simply. "I want to help you, and it will be safer with two of us. Three," he amended. "Altra wouldn't let us go alone."

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