My legs bounced up and down against the flanks of the white horse. I towered above the crowds that now parted ahead of us and scuttled along the sandy ridges of the buildings like mice. Shopkeepers drew back under their awnings and the guards with black capes stood to attention at the gate in the white wall. Hooves clapped on cobbles. Red granite estates looked on through latticed, balconied windows, their roofs of ruddy orange tiles pressing inward toward the palace like vying subjects. I tilted back against the Commander’s chest for a better look. Up there, a shell of timber scaffolds surrounded one of the great domes. Above it the spire flashed in sunlight, the glare blinding.
He rode on past the barracks steps I’d been hauled up yesterday, through a smaller side gate, into a wide gravel yard at the side of the palace. Crowds were everywhere again. But unlike those of the lower streets these moved in lines; men and women, all filmed with grey powder, pushing wheelbarrows of earth and blasted rock from a tall doorway in the wall of the palace, to the adjacent district’s gate. The tall doorway seemed to cough them into the yard on clouds of dust. That same grey dust they were covered in.
Not far from those tall doors, the white Commander reined his horse to a side-winding halt and dismounted. Then he coaxed me out of the saddle and, with firm hands under my arms, lifted me down. My bare feet landed in the gravel.
‘Keep close,’ he bade me, as someone dressed in a plain thobe and cowl took the reins and led the horse away somewhere else. Holding a cloth up to his mouth, the Commander strode towards the coughing doorway. I obeyed and followed him through the haze, my eyes and nose itching and stinging from the particles that floated into them. Snorting and sneezing and rubbing my face, I nearly ran straight into one of the lines of grey people. ‘Keep close!’
Noise raged beyond the doors: a distorted thrash and grind of industry. Another crane arced overhead – this one much bigger than the one out on the wall – raising a massive scoop of rock that leaked hissing showers of earth and smaller stones between the claws of a seeming hand, up out of a chasm in the floor. The load rocked high above our heads, that metal-muscled arm of the crane then groaning off to one side. I cringed at the noise of the huge hand tilting forward on grating joints, and then the crash of the rubble’s tumble through the chute underneath. The rubble then avalanched down through the gloom and coughed dust towards detachments of grey people and their waiting wheelbarrows.
None of this seemed to faze the white Commander, who was heading for the chasm itself. As we came nearer, I could see that it wasn’t so much a chasm as a jagged-edged drop into more gloom.
Then I saw the steps: edging the chasm’s inside wall, a stone spiral of steps, going down. ‘Don’t trip,’ the Commander snapped over his shoulder. The chalky spores were still floating at my face when I peered down into the darkness and decided: I wouldn’t. With my eyes pinned fast to his robes, hand to the wall, I followed down. But the spiral couldn’t have made more than three laps of the chasm wall before it opened into passages of brick.
Close here. Dimly lit. More noise filled up the passages: hammers on metal, blades through timber, the gush of steam and scrape of coal-spades. Bolts stuck out above crude arches and box-lanterns dangled from them, shining with greenish, milky light. Just like the one above the door of our warehouse, there was no flame behind their shutters. Nor any time to look closer; not if I wanted to keep up.
More stairs took us deeper and the brickwork gave way to rough-hewn sandstone. Here the lanterns hung from iron lintels that spanned the width of every passage. The walls were powdery again, as if these passages were fresh, and my feet were soon matt grey to the ankles. Grey workers continued to surge past us with their gravel. Among them, suddenly—that turban! Coughing at the dust churned by the rush of feet and wheels, I glanced back and saw it bob away in the busy current. Green, I was sure.
Through the arches we passed, I saw men and women huddled in teams, seeming to measure things with angled sticks, poring over parchments broad as bedsheets. We were two levels down now, and yet I could feel in my knees the grumbles even deeper down than this. How far down did it go? And how far down did the Commander intend to take me?
As I wondered, he turned a corner and stopped, white robe-ends swaying as if they’d meant to go on. We’d come to a door that stood ajar, and through its sliver of orange light I heard two voices. Arguing.
‘One more word about the Sanhedrin’s plans for fifth and I’ll blow an erg-damned gasket!’
‘You can’t simply ignore them because they’re not men of your Guild.’
‘I’m not ignoring them, I’m working around them. How exactly do you expect me to accommodate these plans? The Deepworks would have brought down the entire citadel by now had I proceeded according to the Sanhedrin’s ideas!’
‘The border is breached’—that voice I knew—‘Such would justify more than a few of their concerns, I should think. This is a potential solution. We cannot continue to send parties to the coast.’
‘I’m aware of that. But, as you are equally aware, we’ve yet to see movement south of the Empty River.’
‘It’ll come! And when it does, I’ll not continue to place the Fortress Guard at risk.’
A sudden slam set off a mechanical rattling inside the room, which then choked out.
‘Whether it pleases the Sanhedrin or not, Mondric, five years from now our pipes may well be drawing up mud.’
A snort. ‘Be serious, five years! There’s been a settlement here for five hundred.’
‘Perhaps that’s why! So I ask you again how you can refuse to see the insanity—’
‘Because the Satrap decrees it!’
Beside me, the Commander shifted on his boots and tucked his little cloth away. ‘Stay here,’ he said and pushed his way into the room. As his body eclipsed the orange glow from inside, the talking stopped. ‘I have the boy,’ he said, muffled.
‘Thank you, would . . .’
The door was heeled closed and the sliver of light disappeared. Alone in the tunnel, I thought of trying to sneak away, up to the surface, back to the warehouse. But could I trust myself to find my way back through the maze? Moments turned to minutes. I listened to the voices on the other side of the door, now unable to make out any words. The two who argued were the loudest, while the Commander’s tone was calm and steady between them.
And then the door was flung wide open and a man filled the threshold. ‘Expect me to raise my eyebrows with the rest of the viziers!’ he blasted over his shoulder. It was the Captain of the Guard.
‘Raise them all you like!’ the other voice shouted from inside.
The Captain saw me. He grimaced, ‘You again?’ and spun on his heel to hold the door. ‘High Commander, you gave me specific instruction about the border refugees.’
‘Be on your way, Mondric, it is an exception,’ was the reply, to which the Captain clenched his fists and fumed, but didn’t say anything else. Making his exit and slamming the door so hard it bounced back on its hinge, he stormed away down the tunnel.
‘Call him in then,’ the voice inside said. ‘The boy, I mean.’
I didn’t want to go in. The other man who was in there sounded angry and far too fierce. Had I really deserved all this, I thought, whatever punishment it was I’d been brought here to receive? All I’d done was throw up! But as the door swayed half-open again, rebounding from the slam, the white Commander beckoned me in with a terse jerk of his head. My legs moved me forward as if I were no better than his dog.
I stepped around the door, and stood still.
If the crane on the wall, or the one at the cavernous entrance, had seemed like a thing from another world, then this here was that world. The ceiling was low, vaulted across with buttresses that made it look like the inside of a kiln. The russet bricks were lit by more of those strange, flameless lanterns; these ones with tan window-shutters that filtered the green light into yellow. Everywhere I looked, machines filled space: great sleeping, black-metal brutes with too many limbs, too many elbows and knees and oily, toothy pins and spines and spokes. Workbenches seemed to push their way from under heaps of metal things, towards the light where they could get it. Heaps of parts and segments of things. Joinings, plates, wheels, levers, pedals, cogs. And tools—so many different kinds of tools!—many still attached to the last thing they’d done or were halfway through doing. Those little nuggets with holes ‒ the clinkers ‒ were everywhere as well: far beyond count, they overflowed out of boxes and spilled from cups. The floor was scattered with them too, some trapped and twinkling in the grooves between the bricks. Over there, on a table, I saw some contraption of wood and silver metal, only partially assembled. It had cords like a crossbow, but also springs and gears and triggers . . .
That rattling noise had started again, drawing my attention to the far side of the room. A man was standing there with his back to us, turning a lever that made the rattle. ‘That fool urgently needs his rivets realigned,’ he said loudly to compete with the rattle. ‘Better yet, fully replaced!’
‘He’s only following orders,’ the white Commander replied.
‘Orders meant for me, you mean, orders from the tower! How else should a man like Shandar Mondric—’
‘He does not, of course, Viceroy, merely expects he might take appropriate initiative ahead of your decision. He is old-fashioned. A guardsman.’
‘Then he should mind his own guard-force and leave matters that concern the Sanhedrin to me.’
The man was very cross, clearly, but the Commander’s tone never changed. ‘With respect, that is what he is doing, in his way. You may be glad of it yet.’
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
‘He’s being bull-headed,’ snapped the cross man. ‘Have we need of more oxen in this city?’ The rattling went on for another minute or more while the cross man’s voice repeated itself strangely in my head: clear and sharp and quick, his sentences barely broken by a breath. Nor was his accent like the others I’d heard so far. There was something else in it; something I was sure I’d heard before.
The rattle stopped.
‘So I’m told you’ve been scrubbing down our banners. Hate to think when last those rags saw a brush. What do you think of Loquar’s crane?’
This was to me. It was, wasn’t it?
‘It’s, uh . . . clever.’
‘It’s a death-trap. A wonder your skull didn’t end up the way of last year’s pottery on those crags. Remember Sachin, poor girl—’ He threw a glance back at the Commander who must know who he was talking about and, as he did, I saw his mustard-coloured skin, a flattened jaw, sharp-flitting eyes. This man was shorter than the white Commander but a little taller than the Captain. Older than both.
The crane. It wasn’t clever—I’d just panicked and said the first thing that came into my head. So, ‘It doesn’t need the second pole,’ I added, then instantly wished I hadn’t.
The man turned around, rubbing a rag over his palms to lift some grease. ‘And all that erg-damned molasses,’ he agreed with me fiercely. ‘I’ve told him much the same thing.’ He rubbed a bit harder at the grease, then briefly glanced at my face.
I looked at him. His surcoat was an amalgam of dense burlap, black hide and yellow metal. It looked like a kind of armour. At his waist was a thick belt with so great a weight of holstered tools attached, I was sure that it could drown a larger man. And he wore a kind of leather cap with earlaps and a neck-guard, all pressed close to his head by goggles tied tight at his forehead. I’d never seen clothing like this in my life and, as he struggled with the grease, found it hard to stop staring.
He’d asked my name.
‘Uh, Flor—’
‘Speak up, the Deep vibrates,’ he said.
‘Florian,’ I said more loudly. Adding, ‘Flint,’ almost too late.
‘Flint, yes, that’s it. Yesterday’s refugees. Trusting the shelter is adequate.’ If this had been a question, he gave me no time to answer it. He seemed impatient or pressed for time. Grimacing at the stubborn grease, he said, ‘You’ll be wondering why you’re here, then. Let me assure you we need no more of the colours rubbed down.’
I cringed. How much of that story did he actually know? Here in this room full of mechanical wonders, it seemed so stupid. But now the man gave up on the grease with a scowl, pushed away from the worktop with the rattle-machine and walked into the middle of the room, his eyes on me. Somehow, although they were a kind of murky brown, or maybe green, they were piercing.
‘I’m Rusper Symphin,’ he said. ‘I am, as you may or may not have gathered, Antissa’s Chief Engineer.’
A pause. Was I meant to say something?
‘In addition, during the Satrap’s temporary indisposition, I hold the office of Viceroy to the throne.’
‘Is this really necessary, Caliph Symphin?’ interrupted the white Commander. He’d read my mind: why did I need to know this?
But the engineer ignored the question and merely gestured to the taller man standing behind me. ‘You’ve met my martial associate, High Commander Plamen, I believe. He is official aide to the Viceroyalty at this time.’ He took a short breath and pushed it out, his nostrils flaring a little. ‘Something was taken from you yesterday.’
The Disc. It was here! Inside this room. I don’t know how I did it but I froze up my muscles then, willing myself not to glance around in search of it.
‘Come,’ the man coaxed. ‘I know full well that you remember. The Captain’s guards gave me your name. Now I’ve called you here to see me quite simply because I’m interested in whatever you can say about the object.’
My heart started to race and my throat twisted shut. It didn’t take long for my silence to annoy him and he narrowed his eyes.
‘Are you going to stand there and gape like a cretin, or speak?’ he said coldly, sounding much more as he had when arguing with the Captain before. But I didn’t care, deciding in that moment that nothing of my home was theirs to know. I clamped my teeth and ground them hard.
He shot a look at the Commander. ‘Plamen, you’ve brought me a mute.’
‘Only as tasked.’ Their eyes met but didn’t hold.
Then, without warning, the engineer sighed enormously and turned around. ‘Did you see that chain of keys?’
The Commander’s calm seemed unbreakable. ‘No, Viceroy.’
‘There they are! What in . . .’ The engineer thrust his arm straight through the eye of a cogwheel, grabbing something that jangled with a slight echo. As a ring of keys emerged in his grasp, he muttered acidly, ‘That old fool at it again . . . keeps this up, by dredth . . . long walk in the desert . . .!’
Flicking through the keys, the man called Rusper Symphin crossed the room. In the corner, that corner farthest from me, he unlocked the door of a narrow, vertical cabinet. And even at my distance I saw the Disc come out of hiding. Returning, the man dragged a stool out from a workbench to the space that spanned between us and set the thing down on its seat.
In the impossible mirror, my face remained somehow undistorted by its curve. Intensely reflected, I could trace every pore of tanned skin and every strand of black hair. How did it do that ‒ make everything around it seem less real than its own reflection? Like my hair, my eyes had always been too dark to tell from black and yet in the face of the Disc it was clear—so very clear—that they were brown. My lip did a tremble and I saw it before feeling it move; caught the twitch of engineer’s arm before he put both arms behind his back.
‘Whittle’s mark.’
I looked up at him, not knowing what those words meant, but he didn’t repeat them. ‘I’ve spent the better part of a lifetime behind these walls,’ said Rusper Symphin more slowly. ‘And I can assure you that you’ll find nothing like this item anywhere else in Antissa, nor anywhere in Vorth for that matter. We Vedans are not known for our trinkets.’
So much of me wanted to tell him that it wasn’t just a “trinket.” But did I know that? And if it wasn’t a trinket, what was it?
He went on: ‘I suspect you brought it to our city. Am I correct?’
Not really listening, or trying not to, I looked deep into the little mirror on the stool. In it, behind my shoulder, I could so clearly see the face of High Commander Plamen, watching me like a predatory white bird. So easily, I could outline the pattern of sparring lions on the brooch that pinned his headdress at the throat . . .
Rusper Symphin was still speaking: ‘Does it hail from Naemia, then, as you do?’
I broke my gaze from the mirror and frowned at him. We weren’t having this talk, let him see it.
‘Very well, let us for the moment assume that’s where it’s from. Is it a jewel perhaps, or a relic of some kind? Something obtained from the bastion of the Celestri?’
How dare he talk about that! That was my family’s story, not his. I turned my frown to the floor, but now that I’d remembered them, found I couldn’t unthink them again: their faces forming out of pockmarks in the bricks. Sarah. Erik. Like bile, the tears started rising.
‘Alright then. If you can’t, or won’t, tell me what it is, at least tell me how you came by it. Did you find it? Buy it, steal it, what? Was it given to you?’ Patience thinning, he rolled his eyes and addressed more questions to the ceiling. ‘Is it an heirloom, a household token?’
I squeezed my eyes shut. Stop talking, just stop.
‘I haven’t the time for this,’ he scowled. ‘You must know something about it, boy, if it was found in your possession, so—desert take it—speak!’
Both my eyes and throat suddenly opened. I looked at him, raised my chin, parted my lips. I’d tell him something, but anything else: that I was a different boy – the wrong boy. I had nothing to do with all this. But that wasn’t what came out.
I said: ‘Give it back.’
Though his face almost seemed to clear of annoyance when I said it, the clever eyes held. ‘Why?’ he said.
‘Because it’s mine.’
A tiny glint happened inside the brown – or green? - eyes.
‘No, it isn’t.’ He took a step forward and stooped over the stool. At his flat denial of my property, I felt the wild urge to dash out and snatch the Disc before he could claim it again, but he didn’t even touch it. Instead he opened his left hand and placed right beside it, a twin. ‘That one is yours.’
Two.
My eyes darted between them, a race. How had I forgotten the Commander had said that yesterday? Had I simply not believed him? Well, who would? They were the same. The same exactly. In size and form. And . . . metal. And in ways that hurt my head to look at for more than fleeting seconds.
‘I’ve had this for over ten years,’ Rusper Symphin was saying, ‘it’s arrival equally lacking in explanation. If that’s possible. And now, at a time when far too much is unexplained, you appear with another.’ He paused with lips ajar. ‘You have to understand. Many now believe we face the very same invasion to which your own country succumbed years ago. But we have enemies of our own, enemies older than your Rath, and reason to believe that such as these may be weapons of their making.’ He paused again to put some softness in his tone. ‘I have the trust of the Satrap to ensure that this fortress stands secure. Don’t you . . .’
No I didn’t, I decided, even before his shoulders sagged as if he’d just read from my face how pointless it was to ask another question. That thing, that Disc, was mine. Sarah’s and mine. Whatever it was! It had nothing to do with his city and his problems.
Or was it that one?
‘Riddle’s bark.’
Before I could even bother making sense of what that meant, new voices bellowed down the tunnels outside the room. Above the sounds of ongoing industry, someone barked a string of orders. Boots drummed on stone somewhere a level above. Commander Plamen went to the door and looked out; the engineer alert. ‘What is it?’
‘Iron Shield,’ said Plamen, returning.
‘Again?’ Rusper Symphin swept both Discs from the stool – one in each hand – and pegged the Commander with a glare. ‘This child cannot be found here.’
‘Perhaps put him out of sight until the patrol is over.’
He chewed his lip. ‘No, can’t risk it. Get him out.’
He couldn’t do this. ‘I want it back!’ I shouted.
The sharp glare swung. ‘And you may yet have it. When you’re a little more forthcoming,’ Rusper Symphin replied, returning to the vertical cabinet and slamming both inside again. ‘Now disappear.’
The Commander’s cool fingers settled on my neck; he ushered me out. As he hurried me back through the Deep, he favoured ladders over stairs, as well as a winch-worked rising platform, to avoid the “patrol” that scoured its levels of tunnels for whatever stupid reason. Up the wide spiral of steps, back above the chasm, he pressed me on through the thick of grey people and wheelbarrows, and then lost me as I ran toward the light of the tall door.