The Iron Revolution Chapter 59: On the Properties of Magnetic Force

Chapter 59: On the Properties of Magnetic Force

Ore blocks had been brought in before dawn by two inner staff who would not talk about the matter past the courtyard gate. The inner courtyard was quiet in its purpose, with high walls on three sides, the garden in the near corner with the sll of cut herbs still hanging in the morning air, and the only entrance the passage from the working annex behind the main building.

Beorn had chalk-marked the ground made of stone across the width of the courtyard. The ore blocks ford a rough line from the smallest, perhaps twenty pounds, to the largest, which was the size of a man’s torso and a dark reddish gray where the iron was denser through the mineral.

Three iron rods leaned against the wall near him. The ledger lay open on a low table beside him.

Tam ca through the passage with the book under her arm. She looked at the ore with mild confusion.

"Good day, Tam." Beorn said. "We’ll be testing your powers today. Don’t worry, there’s only us here."

She nodded once.

He held out one of the short iron rods. "Hold this," he said.

She took it flat on her palm. The rod slid sideways off her hand, then stopped, suspended a few inches above the stone. She looked at it the way she looked at sothing she was controlling.

He picked up a second rod of the sa length. He held it out at arm’s length between them. "Pull it."

She pulled it across, and he let it co.

"Again," he said.

He stepped back two paces and extended the rod. She pulled again. He let go.

They repeated the test across the width of the courtyard fifteen tis, Beorn stepping farther back each ti.

At ten feet the rod ca free of his grip easily. At twenty feet it took effort to hold against her pull, a clear pressure in his fingers instead of a faint suggestion.

At thirty feet he could still feel her working against his grip. The rod shook in his hand, the pull strong enough to be seen as a real force, but it would not co free.

"Hold it there," he said. "Keep trying."

The rod shook twice more, then went still. She had either lost contact or released it.

He wrote the number in the margin, with a question mark after it to show that thirty feet was not the ceiling, only the limit of her current capabilities.

He was walking back toward her when she said, "My lord."

"Yes."

"The book uses the word ’field’ to describe the area I can use my powers." She kept a finger tucked into a marked page. "But when I use it, I don’t feel a field. I feel like I am reaching toward sothing specific. The book makes it sound like water spreading out evenly. That isn’t what it feels like."

He paused, weighing how much to explain.

"Think of a river," he said. "The current is strongest along a central path and weaker toward the edges. Step outside it, and there is nothing at all. The current is not sothing you can hold, but it still pushes and pulls anything inside it."

He stepped closer.

"The book describes the river from the shore. It asures how far the current reaches and how strong it is at different points. But you are not standing on the shore. You are in the water, feeling the pull directly. That is why it feels focused, like reaching for sothing, instead of spread out."

She glanced at the page, then back at him. "That makes more sense."

"It should," he said. "The book explains where the river is. You are feeling how it moves."

She closed the book on the marked page.

He had her move the smallest ore block from the line. It scraped across the courtyard stone at about walking pace, which was faster than he had expected. He noted that.

Then the next block, larger, and this one moved more slowly.

Halfway across, she said, "T-This is hard."

"Tell

whether the difficulty is distance or the weight," he said.

She thought about it.

"The weight. It feels a bit like I’m doing a very hard task, like moving a table or a wardrobe."

He wrote that observation down imdiately. It was a more realistic description than the book’s version, and he wrote it in her wording instead of translating it into technical language, because her wording was what mattered.

The largest ore block moved perhaps two inches before stopping. She held her hands toward it a little longer, and it did not move again.

The small shift and the halt told him roughly where the limit was.

"That’s about how much you can manage," he said.

"F-For," she exhaled, trying to catch her breath, "now."

He looked at her briefly before writing that down too.

"M-My Lord." The exhaustion made it harder for her to speak. Beorn calmly waited for her to compose herself.

"Haa. I read it in the book my powers don’t work on copper, but I didn’t understand why."

He set the quill down and looked at her.

"It’s good that you are inquisitive. Yes, they are both tals, but iron behaves differently from copper. Think of dry wood and green wood. One burns easily, the other resists it."

He let his attention focus on her rather than the ledge, to better instruct.

"I suspect you might be capable to use your powers on copper too, but that’s a problem for a different day."

She tilted her head to the side, going through his answer.

Then she said, "My lord, you are a surprisingly good teacher."

"I... thank you, Tam."

She stifled a chuckle with her hand, then moved on to the next test on the courtyard. By then, she had already recovered enough for it.

To asure precision, he placed two nails flat on the stone near the wall with about a finger’s width between them.

He pointed at the left one.

She looked at both for a mont, then the left nail rose cleanly from the surface and floated.

The right nail did not move.

He crouched and checked the distance from below. It was still the sa.

He said nothing.

He pointed at the right nail, and she set down the left and lifted the right.

The left stayed where it had landed.

He set three nails in a row and pointed at the center one.

She took longer with this one.

Her face flushed red in a way that he had associated with the effort of fine control, the attention a precise physical task required.

The center nail rose. The two outer nails remained on the stone.

He wrote for a while after that.

The stability test was next.

She took the last iron rod from him magnetically while he held it, drawing it from his grip and suspending it in the air between them at chest height.

He put both hands on it and pushed sideways. The rod did not move.

He reversed the direction.

He pushed straight down with his full weight behind it, and the rod compressed against the air under his hands, but didn’t move.

He stepped back, and she released it.

The rod fell onto the stone.

There were more notes on the ledger now, but he still had to decide how to exactly use her powers.

He closed the ledger on it.

"I’ll have two exercises for you tomorrow."

She waited for more.

"They will be a bit more difficult than those today. I need them to see what tasks you can do."

In her eyes, a fire of sheer determination was lit with the challenge.

"All right!" she said. "My lord."

She left through the passage with the book under her arm.

Beorn stood in the calmness of the inner courtyard for a while longer. He opened the ledger again and looked at what had ford in the margin.

The first exercise was an iron pipe from the foundry, and a narrower rod inside it that she would have to maintain floating inside the pipe by magnetic force alone, without the rod touching the walls, while he rotated the outer pipe.

She would have to manage it by feel in all directions at once.

The second exercise was two blocks of cast iron, both from the foundry, one well-made and one with a cavity inside he would introduce on purpose by adjusting the pour.

He would not tell her which was which.

She would use her powers over both and tell which one was compromised.

He did not know whether she could do either task yet.

If she could combine her powers at the level of precision the work required.

That was what the exercises would tell him.

He put the quill away and left the ore blocks where they were.