“Um.” Geoffrey looked boggled for a moment, and then plowed into the subject. “Felling the trees is managed by the EIA. We’re only allowed to harvest a small number to protect the forests around Pittsburgh. They can’t be cut down with chainsaws. It dulls the blades too fast. Some idiots use dynamite but that’s a total waste of wood. They destroy a quarter of the tree trying to bring it down. I think that’s the real reason the EIA controls the cutting, to keep people from blowing up a half dozen trees to get the same amount you get carefully logging one or two trees with magic. The virgin forest is dangerous, but when you clear out the ironwoods, it gets deadly. Soil erosion aside, you get more strangle vines, Black Willows, steel spinners, so forth and so on. Everyone loses when you lay waste to the trees. It’s in Pittsburgh’s best interest to protect the forest. Sorry, I’m ranting. I’m tired and it’s a trigger for me. Nothing pisses me off than to find some newcomer idiot has blasted a big hole in the forest and then just let the trees lie there because they can’t cut them up into logs small enough to move.”
“You use a spell to cut the tree down.” Nigel gently steered the interview back to the main subject.
“Yes. The spell is called taelikiatae or to strike with wind. You slice away bark on opposite sides of the tree — just like you’d notch a tree with a chainsaw — and draw the spell on the side of the wood underneath.”
“I imagine it’s difficult to peel the bark off one of these trees.”
Geoffrey nodded and sipped his coffee. “Its insanely hard to do without the right tools. It’s the main reason people just blast the trees down with dynamite. You can’t buy the tools nor will anyone give them to you. You have to make them yourself.”
“Why won’t they sell them?” Nigel said.
“Um,” Geoffrey studied the ceiling as he tried to figure out a way to answer. “It’s hard to explain the mindset. It’s kind of like the ‘give a man a fish’ vs ‘teach a man to fish.’ Tool grade edges last for one tree. Only ejae have lasting edges and only the sekasha are allowed to carry those. So you cut down one tree and then you need to use spells to sharpen the blades of your tools. That includes the blade on your saw mill, jigsaw, hand planers, every tool that you use. If you can’t make the tools in the first place, it’s useless to sell you a tool.”
“You can’t use conventional tools at all?” Nigel asked.
“Well — you could — maybe. I got a high-grade steel blade with solid tungsten carbide tips on my Peterson portable sawmill. It will stay sharp for two years or more because I use it only on oak and walnut. If I tried to use it on ironwood, it would be dull by the end of the day, and the day after that I’d burn out my motor. I’d need a dozen blades or more that I could have in constant rotation to protect my shop equipment. Each sharpening reduces the life of the blade. You’re literally honing away metal until you have an edge. Eventually there’s nothing left to sharpen. There were some people that set up woodshops in Pittsburgh after the first Startup. They were using all man-made tools. None of them could keep up with the maintenance required.”
“So your knowledge of magic is essential?”
“Magic. Wood. Furniture making. My big weakness is business. Since my family all own their own businesses, I know the basics. I took accounting in high school because I knew I wanted to be able to understand bookkeeping. It wasn’t until I met Usa — someone who went to college for it that I saw that there was this whole big picture that I’d missed. We’re trading services. I’m making a table for her.”
Geoffrey waved a hand toward a massive expansive of maple wood. It looked like it sat nearly twenty people. The bunnies were multiplying like bunnies.
Nigel backtracked in the conversation to pick up a dropped thread. “I’ve read that the ejae are ‘magically sharp’ but I’ve never seen anything that explains that.”
“Probably because no one really understands magic that speaks fluent physics — except maybe Tinker. Tinker domi.” Geoffrey fumbled with Tinker’s new title. He knew the new Vicerine from before all the madness. “The Elvish for the various blades are ‘sharp,’ ‘tool sharp,’ and ‘magically sharp,’ so when you’re told it’s ‘magically sharp’ it’s a literal translation that describes the type of edge it has. ‘Sharp’ is a metal blade like a normal steak knife. See you can’t use magic and metal together — reliably — so any metal blade will be your typical steel ground to an edge. The elves are trailing behind us in that technology. They can’t produce high carbon stainless steel or vanadium alloys, or ceramic blades. They import those from Earth. ‘Tool sharp’ are tools that are iron-wood that are given an edge via magic. They’re fairly easy to make. Not simple — you need to know what you’re doing and have the right tools — but easy. They’re like this table. It would be very difficult for my friend to make it. She doesn’t have the workshop or the power tools or the experience. She could do it, if she worked at it, but it would take her days to do what I did in a few hours.”
“So you couldn’t make magically sharp blades if you wanted to?” Nigel asked.
Geoffrey shook his head. “No, I don’t know the spells involved.”
“I’m sorry,” Nigel said. “But I’m fascinated by this and I want to understand. How do you take a piece of wood and make it be able to cut through anything?”
“What makes a knife sharp is the thinness of the blade. Carbon alloys and such are all about how durable that edge is, but the actual ability to cut is the thinness. When a blade becomes dull, it’s because the edge has worn back to the point where it’s no longer thin. A normal steel knife is sharpened to an edge that is only microns wide. You can take wood down to an edge at the molecular level via magic.”
Chesty rose from the floor just as the door opened to the production truck. Jane rolled back, pulling her pistol.
“It’s me,” Yumiko was disguised as a pizza delivery woman. The tall, willowy female wore a pair of easy to kick off flats, blue jeans and a T-shirt from Church Brew Works as kind of a makeshift work uniform. By smell, she’d brought one of the Brew Works signature pierogi pizzas with mashed garlic potatoes, sautéed onions and cheddar cheese. With a pizza box in hand, she wouldn’t draw a second look.
Jane forced herself to lower her weapon. She still didn’t completely trust the tengu but as supposed allies, she should at least seem like she did.
“You’re having us watched?” Jane posed it as a question but it was the only way that Yumiko could have found them.
“For your own safety. At the moment, the oni are not sure what happened with Joey and Boo. They might have been eaten by the namazu. Kajo controlled the hatchery. He cannot discount that Lord Tomtom might have found the camp prior to the namazu returning to spawn, killed the guards himself, and took the children prisoners. Kajo has not told Lord Tomtom about their disappearance, so it’s possible Kajo still suspects him.”
“Are you just watching me or my whole family?” Jane asked.
“All of your family,” Yumiko stated calmly. “If you ask us to stop, we will be forced to take Boo to Haven. We cannot leave one of the Chosen bloodline unguarded. The oni could use her in the worse possible way to gain control of the flock.”
Jane remembered how Boo had been able to stop Yumiko with a single command. Jane would hate to have someone who had that control of her. “You sure you can trust the people you have guarding us?”
“They would die rather than betray our people. They know better than anyone what the oni would do to us if they had complete control. We are already just animals in the greater bloods’ eyes.”