Fic: The Princess and the Folly

[beatrice_otter]

crossworks has been revealed! I received a lovely fic, a Sorcery & Cecelia/Young Wizards fic by sinkauli, The Unexpected Guest. The character voices are excellent, if you enjoy either fandom go check it out, you shouldn't need knowledge of both fandoms to get the story.

Here's what I wrote:

Title: The Princess and the Folly
Fandom: Rivers of London/Marvel Cinematic Universe
Characters: Peter Grant, Shuri
Written for: Vaznetti in Crossworks 2021
Betaed by: Gemini Demimonde
Length: 5271 words
Rating: General Audiences
Summary: Princess Shuri wants to see if there are any differences between Wakandan magic and Newtonian. The Folly is happy to oblige her.

On AO3. On Tumblr. On Pillowfort.


The call came in on the Folly's landline, not my mobile. Which was fortunate since my mobile was turned off, as it often was in the Folly, even if I wasn't planning on doing magic. I was up a ladder in the far corner of the reference library, and I had to hustle to get to a phone before whoever it was gave up. (Molly was taking the afternoon off to do … something with Foxglove.) I grabbed the bakelite handset and held it up to my ear. "Hello, Special Assessment Unit, Peter Grant speaking."

"This is the Wakandan Embassy," said a deep voice in a melodious accent I had spent a lot of time in the last year listening to in the news and on youtube. "Please hold for Princess Shuri."

I froze. It had to be a practical joke, right? Ever since they'd revealed themselves to the world, every family gathering had turned into a debate about what Wakanda was really like and how world history would be different if they hadn't hidden themselves away for so long. So had half the conversations I'd had with Sahra and other Black friends. But I'd never expected to actually meet a Wakandan; even if they had some magical crime at their London embassy, surely they had their own practitioners to handle it?

"Her Highness, Princess Shuri of Wakanda," the voice said, interrupting my frantic speculations.

"Constable Grant? This is Princess Shuri," said a voice I recognized. So, not a joke, or someone who was really good at vocal mimicry.

"Hello, Your Highness," I said, trying to sound calm and collected and probably failing.

"I will be in London for the next week, and I have been curious about how Newtonian practices compare to Wakandan magical traditions. I am not a magician or priest myself, of course, but the field effects of magic are quite interesting, and I would like some readings to compare the two. I would need cooperation from you and Inspector Nightingale in order to take them. Feel free to say no, I won't complain to your bosses, I don't want to pressure you into serving as a research subject."

I zeroed in on the most interesting part of that. "Excuse me, your highness, would you be measuring the physical effects of magic, or do you have a way to measure the magic itself?"

"Oh, the magic itself, of course," she said.

Everything I'd ever wanted to know about magic but couldn't think of a way to find out crowded through my brain at once. "With a reliable and repeatable unit of measurement?"

She laughed. "It wouldn't be science if we didn't have one, would it, Constable?"

"No, ma'am," I said. "I would be happy to help, what time would work for you?" I only narrowly stopped myself from asking if she could spend the whole week here. She was royalty, I couldn't be pushy. "I can't speak for Inspector Nightingale, but I will ask him."

"Well, if he's not available or doesn't want to, I'm sure you will be able to help," Shuri said. "Would tomorrow afternoon be convenient?"

I frantically reviewed our caseload: nothing urgent, nothing serious, just the sort of minor cases we were seeing more of as the demi-monde got used to the idea that there was someone they could call to handle petty crime. "That would be fine, ma'am."

"And it has laboratory space? I'm afraid the embassy is not well equipped in that respect."

"We have several labs, your Highness, but they were last updated in the 1930s," I said, wincing.

"I wasn't expecting to be able to use your equipment," she said. "As long as there is a large space with tables to put my equipment on, I'll be fine."

"We can at least provide that," I said.

"Excellent! I will see you at two o'clock, then," Shuri said.

"Two o'clock," I repeated.

"Perfect! Then I will see you tomorrow, Detective Constable. Good-bye."

There was a click as she hung up. I stood there with the handset in my hand, dreaming of all the experiments we might run tomorrow. Then I realized: the princess of Wakanda was coming here tomorrow. Molly was going to kill me for not giving her any notice.

---

Nightingale and Abigail were in the Breakfast Room, going over some Latin, when I stuck my head in to tell them about the call. Abigail tried to stay cool, as befit her image, but I could tell she was excited.

Oddly enough, Nightingale was more visibly flustered. "The Princess of Wakanda is coming here?" he said. "To see us? Here?"

"Yeah," I said.

"She didn't request us to attend on her at the Embassy?"

"No," I said. "She'll be bringing her own equipment, but they don't have the space at the Embassy."

He nodded at that. "I believe," he said, "that it will be the first time the Folly has ever hosted royalty."

"What, even back in its heyday?" Abigail asked. "No minor prince ever came for tea?"

"Good heavens, no," Nightingale said. "I realize you think I'm terribly posh, but even at its height the Folly was several social ranks below the level where that might be expected." He shook his head. "Have you informed Molly yet?"

"That's the next step," I said. "I hate to interrupt her day off, but—"

"—but she'll be upset enough at the short notice," Nightingale said. "I'm sure that, given the choice, she'd rather postpone her afternoon off than shorten the preparation time for Her Highness's visit."

So we all trooped down to the portion of the basement that Molly and Foxglove had made their home.

---

I'd never been in their space since the renovations; besides the fact that I'd never been invited, I didn't like the knowledge that I couldn't do magic there. Even in the cells, which I'd designed myself, I sometimes got a twinge remembering Chorley's oubliette. Not the sort of Hollywood flashback where I didn't know where I was, but the quieter sort where my skin crawled and I couldn't quite focus and my hindbrain spiraled off into bad patterns that took me a while to climb out of even with the exercises my therapist had given me.

Still, it helped being there with Nightingale and Abigail.

Foxglove answered at Nightingale's knock, and frowned at us until I explained. Her eyes widened when I mentioned Princess Shuri, and she motioned us in without waiting to hear the rest.

Their space was quite cozy; some of the way the furniture was arranged felt strange to me, but it also felt lived-in, and I could see touches of both women around. Molly was lounging on a couch, wearing a long skirt and blouse, but not her standard maid outfit. I realized I'd never seen her out of uniform in all the years we'd lived in the same household, but then, she hadn't been taking days off. She'd relaxed a lot since Foxglove came.

"I apologize for the intrusion," Nightingale said. "I do hope you will forgive me, but it is urgent. Princess Shuri of Wakanda has requested a visit. She will be here to do some research at two o'clock tomorrow."

Molly's hand flew to cover her mouth, and she made an odd hissing sound, almost a shriek.

"Yes, I'm afraid it's terribly short notice, but it is the time she wanted," Nightingale said. "Of course I would never dream of trespassing on your time off, but I thought that under the unusual circumstances, you would prefer to know now and perhaps postpone your day off to later in the week."

Molly nodded frantically. She stood up, and she and Foxglove stared at each other for a few moments. Foxglove nodded and whirled away. Molly turned to me, held her hand flat to the side of her head by her ear, then pointed to me and snapped.

"What?" I said, not understanding what she was trying to say.

"She wants your phone," Abigail said, in a withering voice.

"Who's she going to call?" I asked, but unlocked it and handed it over.

Molly began typing frantically away. "You know, if you want a phone, we can get you one," I said. "Or you could order it yourself." I knew she and Foxglove had a laptop of their own in here somewhere, with a wireless hotspot.

She ignored me. After a few minutes, my phone chimed with incoming texts, to which Molly replied.

"I realize there is a great deal to do in only a short time," Nightingale said. "Might we help?"

Molly nodded to him, and handed my phone back to me. I checked it. She'd asked my Mum for help, which made sense; Mum could bring in a massive cleaning crew at a moment's notice. Now, the Folly was maintained in what I thought was immaculate cleanliness and care, and I should know, given how often my mum had dragged me to one of her cleaning jobs. The chances of Princess Shuri noticing anything that had managed to slip through Molly's ordinary efforts was practically nothing. But, I supposed, Molly would know.

I sighed as Foxglove bustled back in, arms full of cleaning supplies. I took the cloth and furniture polish she handed me, and Nightingale did the same.

Abigail, however, folded her arms instead. "Nope," she said. "Not happening."

Foxglove held out the supplies more emphatically. Molly glared.

Nightingale said, "Part of every apprentice's training is doing the unglamorous work necessary to the proper functioning of the establishment."

"Yeah, but I already do a lot of that, don't I?" Abigail said, with a calculating look in her eye. "Digging through the library when you have a case. And I'm an apprentice practitioner, not an apprentice copper."

"And now there is a different sort of unglamorous work to be done," Nightingale said.

"If I'm going to help prepare for Shuri's visit, I want to be here for it," Abigail said. She stared at Nightingale. Nightingale stared back. Molly glared at both of them.

"Very well," he said, and Abigail crowed and took the cleaning supplies.

---

Mum frowned when she heard about it. "You should have left her to me," she said, as we polished the wood panels in the lobby.

"I know, Mum, but Nightingale caved before I could say anything." I hoped to head her off. I could just imagine what she would have to say at the idea of a child refusing to work when her elders were working.

"I will speak with her," Mum said.

"I doubt Nightingale will go back on his word, though," I said.

"That is not the issue. It is done, and so she will get to meet this Wakandan princess. But she behaved badly, and she should know it. Besides, I doubt she has anything suitable to wear."

Which brought up the question, what was I going to wear? My nicest suit wasn't nearly nice enough for meeting royalty. Especially standing next to Nightingale, he of the million bespoke suits. On the other hand, we would be experimenting, and that could get messy.

---

The building in Regent's Square was everything Shuri expected: boring, stodgy, old, filled with the sort of monotonous straight lines and right angles that colonizers loved.

She walked up the stairs to the front door, trailed by her assistant Xolani with their equipment. Her bodyguard, Ndiliswa, walking behind them, eyed everything with suspicion. Shuri doubted she was in any danger here, but she knew better than to argue with the Dora Milaje.

The door swung open for her at exactly the right moment—nice bit of theater, that. She walked into the foyer: more straight lines and right angles and muted colors. Inspector Nightingale was waiting for her in a nice suit, with Detective Constable Peter Grant beside him, also in a suit. Beside Grant was a teenage girl Shuri didn't recognize—she'd asked their intelligence staff for a basic assessment of the characters of Nightingale and Grant, to see who she was working with and if she could trust them, and hadn't bothered to read the entire file once she'd gotten what she needed. Next to the teenager were two umntu wasentsominis in old-fashioned European-style clothes, and next to them was a middle-aged West African woman.

Nightingale and Grant bowed, the others curtseyed. "Your highness, you are most welcome to the Folly," Nightingale said in a smooth, courteous voice. "I am Thomas Nightingale, the Master of the Folly. Peter Grant, my apprentice, you met over the phone." He gestured to the teenager, who was trying hard not to look impressed and failing. "This is Abigail Kamara, our junior apprentice." Kamara curtseyed again. The two umntu wasentsominis were introduced as Molly and Foxglove, and the West African woman was Grant's mother, Mamusu.

Shuri smiled and said the boring diplomatic niceties required for politeness' sake, and soon enough the wizards were leading her up to their laboratory.

---

It wasn't much of a laboratory. She knew the colonizers were backwards, and Grant had warned her, but this was positively from the stone age! It did have a fume hood and sinks, but the microscopes were simple compound microscopes of the sort you might find in a school. She kept her face blank, but her impression of Newtonian wizards plummeted.

Still, it wasn't as if she needed their equipment, anyway, just the space. She turned from her appraisal of the room to help Xolani lay out their equipment, keeping her judgment off her face. (She could be diplomatic, when the situation called for it; she just didn't often think the situation called for it. But she was on their territory, needing their help for her work, and that was reason enough.)

"Uh, can I ask a question, your Highness?" Grant asked.

"Of course," Shuri said absently, tapping away at a display and making sure all the sensors were properly connecting as Xolani placed them around the room and turned them on.

"How are you going to keep your equipment from being sanded? Do you have some sort of shielding to protect it?" He sounded eager.

"Sanded?" Shuri looked up at him frowning. "What's that?"

"You know, fried." Grant shrugged. "The way magic turns computer chips into their component molecules."

Shuri stared at him. "I have never heard of that happening. When does it happen?"

"Any time magic comes into contact with a microprocessor that has power running through it, the microprocessor goes poof," Grant said. "It's an area effect. If a spell or enchantment gets close enough to the chip, the chip is sanded. And how close is close enough depends on how powerful the spell is."

"Wakandan technology does not use microprocessors in the Western model," Shuri said. "The question is, would your magic do anything to our technology? Is the reason our computers do not turn to sand around magic because the computers are different, or because European magic is different from Wakandan magic?" It did explain the lab, however—there would be no point to what passed for modern scientific equipment in Europe, if that equipment would just get destroyed as you began your experiment.

"We'll have to test it," Peter said. "As far as I know, spells cast by a human practitioner always sand any microchip in range. Fae magic also sands microchips—"

"Fae?" Shuri asked.

"Like Molly and Foxglove," Nightingale said.

"Ah! We call people from other realities umntu wasentsominis," Shuri said.

"Umntu wasentsominis?" Grant said, curiously.

"But Rivers don't sand anything," Abigail put in. "They don't have to have great big shutoff switches for their mobiles, just waterproof cases."

"So, it might be a difference in magic," Shuri said. "I wish we had a Wakandan witch to test this out with, and an orisha, but I suppose I can always do that when I get home. Do you have any devices you would not mind sacrificing? I would like to see the effect for myself." This was shaping into a much more interesting project than she had anticipated. When she had thought up the experiments, she'd mostly been trying to find an excuse to spend at least one day of her short London stay doing something interesting, instead of making nice with slimy politicians and visiting museums full of things the English had stolen. But this might open up a whole new angle on her work translating between Wakandan technology and that of the rest of the world.

"Abigail, if you would produce the test devices for Her Highness," Nightingale said.

Abigail darted to one of the cupboards and returned with a tub full of electronic devices. They all looked to be cheap, used, or both. Well, if they were to be destroyed, that made sense.

"I think I should like to see one device sanded first," Shuri said, "with one of our sensors next to it to see if it gets sanded as well, and if not, what it can pick up."

Xolani started packing away the sensors she had just set up. "I will remove these from the room, just in case."

"Sounds good," Grant said, picking a calculator out of the tub and turning it on. Abigail took the tub and set it on a bench at the back of the room.

Shuri picked up the display tablet and accompanying peripherals and took them out of the room as well. They were all basic equipment easily replaced, but that would waste time she did not have; she only had the one afternoon free.

Once they were ready, Grant created a ball of light over the calculator. The sensor next to it did not experience anything unusual; the readings were exactly what Shuri would expect from a spell of that type. Or, at least, the magic it recorded was typical, but the reaction in the chip as it sanded was fascinating. It was good she had not speculated in advance of her data; she would not have predicted what she found at all.

"Anything interesting?" Grant asked.

"The sensor is fine, and your magic is within Wakandan norms, at least for basic spells," Shuri said absently. "But you may find what happened to the chip interesting."

The British wizards gathered around her tablet, and she brought up the readings again, including a magnified three-dimensional model of the chip as it deconstructed, and played it in slow-motion. "There, you see?" she said. "It's not just a physical change, as if the chip were ground in a mortar and pestle; some of the component molecules have separated into simpler ones. Given that, I would have thought the chemical change would come first and produce the degradation of the physical structures of the chip. But it is the other way around. The larger structures degrade … and then the molecules change chemical state. And there is an energy sink somewhere; the reaction should be producing heat than it does."

"Any idea what might cause that?" Grant asked.

"I need more data," Shuri said. "First, I want to try that again with a single sensor and Inspector Nightingale doing the most powerful spell he can in the lab, to see if that makes a difference, either to the reaction or to my sensor. Then we can set up the whole suite of sensors and get some really thorough data, and see if that suggests anything."

The British wizards were amenable to her suggestion, and over the course of the afternoon they destroyed a great many chips in a great many ways—different spells, different intensity of the same spell, different distance from the spell, different wizards doing the spell—and came no closer to learning why it happened. That was alright, though, sometimes research was like that. It was enough for Shuri to get started with. And there were interesting variations in the pattern of degradation between spells cast by Nightingale and those cast by the Junior Apprentice, and that was true even when they were performing the same spell. But was that because she was just learning her first spells and was not as precise as her teacher, or was it for some other reason?

Of the three British wizards, the youngest was the best able to understand the things Shuri pointed out in the readings. Nightingale was courteous, but didn't really follow any of it and wasn't bothered by that. Grant was eager and keenly interested, but had more gaps in his knowledge of physical and chemical properties than a man of such obvious intelligence and curiosity should. After several years working at outreach centers across the globe, Shuri was all too intimately familiar with the ways in which Western educational systems tended to fail people like Grant. It was a pity. But she had learned enough tact not to mention it, and he was quick to integrate the explanations she gave into his thought processes, so really, it was not a problem for their experiments. And he even had the knack of asking good questions, which was half the trick to being a successful scientist in the first place.

Eventually, the umntu wasentsomini in the black dress and white apron came to the door and loomed meaningfully.

"Your Highness, would you do us the very great honor of staying for tea?" Inspector Nightingale asked.

Shuri opened her mouth to protest that she would much rather stay in the lab, but stopped. She was here in the UK as an envoy of Wakanda, and she owed courtesy to her hosts. Besides, there wasn't much she could do right now; she needed time to analyze the data before any more in-depth experiments could be designed. "Of course," she said, with a smile her mother would have approved of.

The room where they took tea was just as boring-old-colonizer in design as the rest of the building, but the spread of food and desert was impressive. It startled Shuri until she remembered that for the English, "tea" was both a beverage and a meal. Well, she was hungry, and it turned out to be very good food.

Grant's mother and the other umntu wasentsomini joined them. Shuri should turn the conversation to general small talk which everyone could participate in, but she was curious about something she hadn't had time to ask, in the midst of their experiments.

"You mentioned you were developing a rudimentary metric for magical power used," Shuri said. "How can you do that if you don't have any devices you can use around magic without them turning to sand?"

"How much power it takes to sand something at what distance tends to be fairly consistent," Grant said. "So if you set up cheap devices, like the ones we used today, at regular intervals, you can see how large the area of effect is, if nothing else. We're still working out the kinks in it, though. And we don't even have a name for it."

"It's the Kamara," Abigail said, "since I was the one who thought it up."

"It was a joint effort," Grant said, "we were brainstorming together."

"If you want credit, you should have come up with it sooner," Abigail said. "Besides, you're a Kamara, on your mum's side. So it credits you, too. And it's better than the yap."

"The yap?" Shuri asked.

"DC Grant's first attempt at a primitive measurement scale," Nightingale said. "We have a dog, Toby, who was sensitized to magic as part of the case through which he was acquired. He yaps when confronted with magic."

"The more magic, the more yapping," Grant said. "Of course, there's no way to calibrate him, and a lot depends on what kind of mood he's in."

"I would imagine so." Shuri was amused. The yap, measured by how excited a little dog got. Still, given the resources available to him, it was probably better than nothing. "How do you account for variations in his physical and emotional state? I would imagine his reactions would vary based on things like hunger and fatigue and what his mood was."

"That's one of the main problems with the yap scale," Grant admitted. "You really can't. And we only have the one dog, so there's no calibration of the scale possible. Also, he's a lot more used to magic now than he used to be, so his reactions haven't stayed constant over time. You just have to know him and make adjustments from there. Not very scientific, I know," he shrugged, "but it was at least a start."

"There is one advantage of the yap over the Kamara, as a way of measuring magic," Nightingale said. He sipped his tea.

"Oh?" Shuri asked.

"Toby can sense magic after the fact," Nightingale said. "And he is far more portable than the array of old electronics currently required to measure anything on the Kamara scale. I'm afraid that, however interesting it may be, any scale which can only be used in the lab in pre-planned experiments is of limited usefulness in any practical sense."

"Sadly true," Grant said, helping himself to another sandwich. "I don't suppose any of your detectors might be for sale?"

"I'm sorry, but they contain vibranium," Shuri said. "And I don't know if it would be possible to make them without it. That's part of how they function; vibranium atoms vibrate differently in the presence of magic."

"Wait," Abigail said, "I thought vibranium didn't vibrate, and that's what made it so special and shock absorbing and everything."

"That is a common Western misconception, or rather, simplification," Shuri said. "It absorbs physical shock without passing it on, and without vibrating, but certain types of energy do affect it. Most of those it also absorbs and stops, but not all. The internal effect is subtle, but pronounced enough to use as a sensor."

"So there wouldn't be any way to create a magic detector that didn't use vibranium?" Grant asked.

"Not right away," Shuri said. "Certainly not without understanding how and why microchips sand when exposed to magic. But then, a great deal of my work in the last few years has been adapting Wakandan technology for use without vibranium, either for sale or as a gift to various development organizations. I don't like to say things are impossible, but at the same time, I couldn't give you an estimate of how long it would take to find out even if it is possible."

"I am sure that if anyone could figure it out, it would be your highness," Nightingale said. "But we do appreciate that your time is very valuable, both to your nation and to your outreach centers. We wouldn't wish to presume."

Shuri shrugged. "It would be an interesting challenge. I enjoy challenges. But my research time is heavily scheduled and tied to Wakanda's strategic needs. I could send you some of our scientific treatises on magic … but they are all in Xhosa."

Grant sighed. "Well, I'm already learning Latin and Greek for wizardry, what's one more?"

"Would be a lot more interesting than Greek or Latin, though," Abigail said.

"I always thought that if you were going to learn an African language besides Krio, it would be Fula," Mrs. Grant said wistfully.

"Yeah, so did I," Grant said.

They shared a look, which Shuri didn't comment on. She'd learned that in Oakland, at the outreach center, after a few too many instances of what she thought was an innocuous comment had dug into painful histories she only knew the outlines of.

"Do you have any books on magical beings and creatures?" Abigail asked.

"We don't separate them out quite like you are implying, but we do have books on them, and some by them," Shuri said. "I don't know how much good they would do you, though."

"Let me guess, they're also in Xhosa?" Grant said. He did a credible attempt to make the click, not the worst example of it she'd heard by far.

"Well, yes, but also, many magical beings are different from what you have in Europe," Shuri said. "Physically and magically, but also culturally."

"Bet Doctor Vaughn would love to read them, even so," Grant said.

"Indeed," Nightingale said.

"Pity we can't put them up online, see if we could get a crowdsourced translation project going," Grant said. "Lots of people have learned Xhosa in the last several years, and it would be quicker than waiting until one of us has learned Xhosa."

"Why can't you?" Shuri asked. "Wakanda's system of ensuring that creators are compensated for what you call 'intellectual property' is quite different from copyright. So you don't have to worry about that."

"Your Highness, the issue of copyright is the least of the problems," Nightingale said. "Whatever the situation in Wakanda may be, magic is not a matter of public record in the United Kingdom, Europe, or America. Its existence is a secret."

Shuri stared at him. "There is a witch and a sorcerer on the Avengers. This is public knowledge."

"Neither of them come from the traditional Human magical communities," Nightingale said, "nor from the demi-monde."

"Why are you hiding?" Shuri asked. "When Wakanda hid itself, it was because we feared invasion by colonizers. We could have defeated them, but Europe at the time would have taken it as a challenge and kept the armies coming to try and take what we have. But you are not in that sort of danger; you are part of the power structure of your nation."

"Yeah, but they don't like to admit it," Grant said. "We interfere with their nice, neat view of the world."

"In addition, there are … agreements of long standing between the organizations of wizards in various European nations," Nightingale said. "And given that the moment in which wizardry came closest to breaking into the public view in the 20th Century was as a result of Nazi experiments, I am not in any rush to change those agreements."

"I would think that being in the public view would make you less vulnerable to co-option by unethical people, not more," Shuri said. She wasn't bound by those agreements, and she considered putting the texts up for crowd-sourced translations herself.

"Yeah, but then we'd be in the public view," Abigail said. "And I'd rather not have to worry about getting my picture in the Daily Mail, thanks."

"And on a pragmatic level, we're barely enough to keep up with the magical crime and crime in the demi-monde as it is," Grant said. "Magic goes public in Europe as something ordinary people can learn, and a lot of them would try it immediately. If they didn't fry their brains, learning without an experienced teacher, I bet some of them would use it for mischief, and then we'd be swamped."

"Indeed," Nightingale said. "As for the Xhosa, given how many languages my apprentices have had to learn for their training, it only seems fair that I should have to learn one, as well—and we would greatly appreciate any resources you have to spare."

"Eh," Shuri said, "books are a simple enough thing to give you, and it is not secret in my country. And I thank you for indulging my curiosity and providing space and magic for my experiments—and thank you also for the puzzle; if I manage to figure out why the microchips turn to sand, I will let you know."

"Now, that would be wonderful," Grant said. "And if you're ever in London again and would like to do some more experiments, just let us know, we'd be happy to help."

"I will do so," Shuri said, and the conversation turned to other topics.