Mull and Athen’s room was next to mine, and I was scared of rousing them instead of the tech. Dandrake save me if I broke their sleep after they slaved all day on the tabernac.
Come morning, I set the boxes out on the window ledge again, being afraid that they might not of drawed down enough power, or that they had used up all they took even though they didn’t do nothing yet. Ma stayed home that day, so I didn’t get no chance at all to put them to trial again. Just before lock-tide, she went to visit with Shirew Makewell, but right then was when Athen and Mull come home. I had to wait until we all of us went off to sleep, just like the night before.
As soon as the goodnights was all said and my door was closed behind me, I went to it, pressing and holding, confirming and acknowledging and all the ruck and run of it. I was clinging onto hope like a man sinking in a bog holds onto a clump of grass, not daring to pull on it in case it breaks clean off. The boxes still wasn’t doing nothing at all but lie there, while I tickled and coaxed and begged and meddled to no purpose.
A thought come to me then. The tech had laid in the Underhold for years on top of years. If the Vennastins knowed the same things Ursala knowed, which they had got to because otherwise they couldn’t of made the tech wake for them, then they knowed how to do all the things I was doing now. And if they knowed, then they must of tried them out. The rest of us only got to see the tech on testing day, but Dam Catrin and her kin lived with it all year round – and everything they had, everything they was, come from this one power, this one thing that they had the say over.
I seen it, of a sudden, and I didn’t doubt but it was true. They must of pressed every switch and spoke every word, not blind like me but careful and slow and patient, year after year – just in case they found a fifth piece of tech that someone could hold, so their power could sit that much firmer and their glory be greater still.
And now here I come, with the big secret burning a hole through my head, thinking it give me advantage, when it hadn’t never been a secret to the Vennastins in the first place. So whatever I tried, it was certain sure they must of tried it before.
The sorrow of it come down on me like a weight. All the things I done, that I thought was uncommon brave and brilliant, wasn’t nothing of the kind. I was just a thief and a scoff-law, bloated up with big intentions. The kind of man I never had any consideration for and never wanted to be. The kind of man that eleven times out of a dozen ends up faceless or shunned.
I set down the box I was holding. I didn’t do it gentle, neither, but sort of pushed it away from me across the bed. I put my head down in my hands. I think maybe I was crying, though I don’t remember for sure. I felt like crying anyway.
“Go ahead and choose a channel,” a voice said. “It’s not like it’s gonna bite you.” It was a girl’s voice, and it come from right next to me on the bed. I jumped up like I was stung, and looked around to see who said it. I didn’t see no one, but the box I just throwed down was all on fire with light. The light was coming from the black window, only it wasn’t black no more but full of swirling, twisting colours like oil poured out on water.
The girl give a laugh. “Or maybe I should choose, baka-sama,” she said. “Put your tunes in my hands. You can trust me. Just tell me how you want to feel.”
It was the strangest voice I ever heard. The sounds of it was wrong in some ways. Like when the girl said feel, she made it longer than it should be. Fee-el. As if it was two words instead of one. But it was a real beautiful voice too, like it was halfway to being a song. And there was a kind of a brightness in it, so you