Warm water trickled over my neck and down my shoulders, chest and back. The piece of soap slithered away. When I managed to catch it, I made a lather and worked that slowly into my hair, watching the dark droplets make spirals through the surface of the water. Everything ached, as if my body had been stretched. It ached to move; it ached to think.
At the end of the workshop, it turned out, was a set of steps. Those steps led down into a chamber, almost empty except for the bathtub I now sat in, washing myself by the light of a lantern on the bottom step. Rusper Symphin had said it had been nearly an hour when I’d come to, after passing out, and when I’d woken he’d called a servant to draw the bath.
I tipped another pailful of water over my head. Suds ran into my eyes but the sting was distant. Someone else’s. I felt apart from it, my senses, and what had happened to my body. Whatever that was. Even the water I was in should have amazed me: instead of having to be brought here in so many buckets, it had poured straight from a tube at nothing but the turn of a screw! Yet all I’d done was stare at it without a thought. Had it been hours or days since I’d last seen the warehouse shelter? I rubbed my knees, dulling the water.
The engineer came down the steps. Beside the lantern he laid a towel, some clothes and a pair of sandals. Leaving again. I waited for the sounds of his movements in the workshop, then eased myself out of the tub and dried my body on the towel. For the first time in many days it didn’t smell; I could run my fingers through my hair without turning up those gritty sand-flakes.
A big clap came from upstairs.
Quickly, I slipped on the fresh clothes, put on the sandals, grabbed the lantern and went up into the workshop. It was full of smoke that stung my nose and I had to flap my hands at first to see my way. Rusper Symphin stood at the middle worktop, wearing his goggles and hard gloves. Where the parchments had been before was now an assortment of pots, jars, cups, pestles and mortars, vials and kettles, and a lamp. I saw him tip something like sand out of one jar, into another. Something popped and smouldered inside a bowl in front of him, but as I tried to make out what it was he must have seen the lantern’s light coming behind him. ‘Stand clear,’ he said.
I obeyed.
‘And put these on.’ Without turning around, he prodded me in the chest with an extra pair of goggles. I wriggled them onto my head, fidgeting and nudging at the bulging eyepieces that kept on sagging from my eyes.
‘What is that stuff?’ I ask him.
‘Chrozite,’ he said. As if that helped. ‘Since the beginning of our border defence, we’ve been testing its reaction with flame. Something we discovered quite by chance.’ He sifted the stuff inside the bowl ‒ a chalky, yellowish gravel ‒ then dusted his gloves and produced a short hempen cord. He lit one end of the cord on the lamp-flame, then lay it against the inside of the bowl. ‘I’d advise another backstep,’ he said, taking one himself.
Sizzling, the flame inched towards the gravel.
A vicious crack split through the workshop; both he and I ducked on reflex. A ball of dense white-yellow smoke billowed up and mushroomed wide across the ceiling, soon thickening the air with acrid fumes that made us cough.
‘A highly . . . flammable solution,’ he choked out, waving an arm to disperse the gases. ‘And one, at that, which may be extremely effective if channelled.’
I kept on flapping at the smoke, but soon enough it thinned. ‘For what?’
‘For darning socks,’ he replied, detaching his goggles to loop them over the arm of a machine. I hadn’t missed the sarcasm, but he still nodded towards the worktop where the half-built contraption I’d seen earlier lay waiting. A weapon? He read the question off my face. ‘Such is my work. Well, part of it anyway. Now,’ he added with a tug on his medallion, ‘everything’s my work. How do you feel?’ It wasn’t the first time he’d changed the subject without warning.
Unsettled again, I toyed with the hem of my fresh shirt and thought about what to say. He’d seen the white light erupt out of the Disc, and seen it vanish. He’d seen me drop and pass out. He knew as well as I did that those things had really happened an hour ago.
But the voice . . . the one I’d heard inside my head as they had happened . . . I’d told him nothing about that. And didn’t think I wanted to.
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘Hm.’
‘Just tired.’
‘Well,’ he exhaled, then clicked his palate with his tongue. ‘Whether or not what we have seen is Lackish magic, if anything is clear it’s that we know none of its risks. There is a force contained here. Of its origin or purpose or strength we know nothing. Nor what it may do should we carelessly invoke it again. You appear unscathed on this occasion.’ His eyes danced over my face. ‘But we may not be so lucky a second time. Care must be taken.’
Somehow, even through the goggles on my eyes, he must have known I wasn’t looking at his.
‘Florian?’
I looked.
‘Best we keep it to ourselves.’
Finally: something we agreed on. We stood quietly for a few moments longer, while chemicals simmered on the worktop. ‘I should get back to the shelter,’ I said at last.
‘Yes.’ He was chewing his mouth, eyes far away. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Dark up there soon.’
There was no way to say the next thing without sounding ungrateful. ‘Could I have my old clothes back please?’
Turning his head to look at me, he made a face. ‘The old ones, what?’ he said. ‘They’re rancid. What’s wrong with these?’
‘Nothing,’ I assured him. ‘Just I can’t go back dressed like this. They’ll ask me questions. The sandals are fine and really nice, and thank you, but the clothes . . .’
The engineer was still looking at me but only half-listening, I could tell. ‘I see,’ he said before cocking his head. ‘Well, I’m afraid it’s too late. While you were bathing I had them sent up to the furnaces already.’ I sagged.
Rusper Symphin crossed the room, making me hope for a moment that he would give back my Disc. But he went nowhere near the cabinet into which they’d been returned. Arms behind his back, he spun around and stuck his chin out.
‘It may be there’s a vacancy appearing on my staff.’
‘A . . . vacancy?’
‘Yes, a post.’ I stared back. ‘A position, boy. A job. The hours are long and stipend meagre for mere assistants of the Guild, and you will not be guaranteed apprenticeship. But board and lodging are provided.’
As the words found meaning in my head, I pulled the goggles off my face. ‘Me, you mean?’
A shallow nod.
‘But I’m . . .’
An eyebrow lifted. ‘What?’
‘Twelve!’
‘Your point?’
I searched my mind for more objections – the green turban! ‘What about Loquar?’
‘Hah!’ he laughed, flapping a hand. ‘The man’s been rotting from the brain down long enough, and I assure you has quite outlived his uses. He’s nearly eighty after all, and smells abysmal. And he’s been hawking pilfered sparts from me for years.’
‘Sparts?’
‘Spare parts,’ he said and suddenly it occurred to me that the fish-chopper I’d pawned to Effod the daskh-man had probably come from right here. ‘The coffers of the Mooncircle Throne are deep yet. Loquar will be compensated well for his services to me and further monies will go to his wife in the event of his death. You needn’t worry about him. I don’t.’
Outside the door of the workshop, wheeled vehicles moved through mingled voices of the other engineers, though not as many as before. Were duties ending for the day? I swallowed hard and tried to fathom what it would mean if I said yes. Access to all these weird machines, a chance to learn what each one did and how they worked, even how to build them? Maybe. They surrounded us now like bulky people listening in, waiting for my answer, while the Deep at large ached itself in through the walls. And then, of course, there were the Discs . . .
But it couldn’t happen. For a start, how would I explain it to Con and Jerome? What would the others think of me ‒ all the others who had made it here, bruised, bereaved but alive, when Erik and Sarah hadn’t ‒ that I was simply going to leave them to their fate in that warehouse? I pictured Dewar’s face clouded dark. Disappointment, distrust, anger.
Rusper Symphin rolled his eyes. ‘You need to think about it, clearly.’ When I said nothing, he sighed. ‘Understandable, I suppose. Very well then. Return here, at this same hour, in three days, and have an answer. If in that time I hear nothing, or indeed never see you again, then the offer is withdrawn. Obviously.’ He spoke sharply again, as if by not agreeing at once I’d hurt his feelings, and turned to widen the wall-lantern’s panels. ‘Do you remember the way out? I have no one to escort you.’
‘Think so.’
‘Ladder, stairs, ladder. Don’t take the winch-lifts, they’ve been sticking. From the rubble-shaft stairs, out of the citadel by the tall Deeping Door. Don’t look lost.’ He raised a finger. ‘And if you’re approached by men in blue and white uniforms, you do not speak, is that clear?’
‘Why not?’ I said, frowning.
‘Your accent. Makes it too obvious.’
‘Makes what obvious?’
‘Hell-sands, boy! Is it not yet plain enough?’ he exclaimed. As I blinked back, bewildered, his voice dropped to an urgent murmur. ‘The Satrap did not open Antissa to your people, Florian. He knows nothing about the borderland refugees in his city, and if he did, well, suffice it to say that mercy is not among the virtues of Satrap Syphus the Second. Blue and white – do not speak!’
‘But if the Satrap didn’t let us come here, who did?’
He spun around on his heels. Snatching his goggles, he went back to the chrozite. ‘Thank you, ekhin Flint. That will be all.’
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Time to go. Back to my people in fancy, foreign, privileged clothes. I dreaded the questions they’d ask me and yet realised, even as I walked towards the door, that I wanted even less to change back into that; back to dodging kicks from the street and eating out of the scornful, grudging hands of wardens. Back to keepers and waiting for water. Back to loss and weeping. None of that was what I wanted. But I was Naemian. An outsider, and unwelcome in this city. I couldn’t stay here in this place or serve this man. ‘Don’t you care?’
‘About what?’
I turned around. ‘That I came from the borderlands.’
His goggle-lenses found me, the triglycerate light reflecting on their glass like fine green pupils.
‘You’re small for twelve,’ said Rusper Symphin, as if he’d only just noticed. ‘But you’ve energy and wits both quite sufficient for my trade. The rest has little bearing and I’d thank you not to raise the like again. I don’t care if you came from a camel’s backside.’
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From the Deeping Door I stepped out into night, freshly fallen. The grey diggers had gone now and the gates of the neighbouring district were shut. The gravel yard was empty but for three men with drawn-up scarves who stood some yards away, talking very low. Their murmurs carried. Whoever they were, they didn’t look like guards, and the sound of their voices made me think of the Rath; how their gibbers had echoed among the rocks of the hills. One of them glanced in my direction, drawing the others to look at me as well.
I slunk along the wall, out of the yard.
Though it was a clear sky, deep indigo, only a few handfuls of stars made themselves known. I’d always liked to watch them on clear nights back in the borderlands, and remembered the way Erik had always made fun of how I’d stand and stare upwards, not caring who was watching me. “Reel those blinks out off the welkin, you,” he’d laugh, “or the tide’ll take them!” Whatever that had meant – some or other fisherman’s saying – I wished I hadn’t thought of it.
Lamplight flickered tan and orange behind the estates’ drawn-down blinds, while ahead, the tops of palm trees waved above the inner district wall. A cool breeze was up. It chilled my scalp, my hair still damp, and sprinkled sand across my ankles. The shirt was thin but coarsely textured and its sleeves hung down like towels. I felt stupid with it on. Clean, but stupid.
And sore. In the wake of whatever had happened, my head and body were throbbing. Had the Disc, what . . . attacked me? But how, and what with? Somehow the things Rusper Symphin had told me about magics didn’t fit the way my body had felt right in that moment. Not that I knew how magic felt. That white light that had leapt out and grabbed me felt . . . alive. My muscles spasmed with the memory of how its current had seemed to search inside me while putting that voice into my head. Little spark, it had said. Not for the first time either.
I glanced back, hearing footsteps.
No one was there. Only shadows.
I followed the wall of the palace – no, the “citadel,” that’s what they called it – towards the Inner Gate. As I made my way, I passed barred entryways to the citadel courtyard. The loud conversations of some guards on duty there bounced off the stone, but I only saw their tall shadows moving in and out of lantern-light. Triglycerate.
So Rusper Symphin was the man who had called us to Antissa, not the Satrap. I wondered why it seemed so secret, and why he’d warned me about the men in blue and white uniforms. And what had happened to the Satrap that an engineer must now step in and rule the city instead? Or was it the whole country? The engineer had said the Satrap didn’t want us in his city. So, if it was wrong to give shelter to the borderland people, then why had he done it? All around us I’d seen the signs that their resources were low. We had to eat, but so did they. And as refugees from a foreign land – a land to which Vorth had never been a friend, as far as I knew from Sarah’s stories – it was clear that we brought trouble in an already troubled time.
Leaving the citadel wall behind, I remembered what he’d said about his own life. Although he called himself Vedish, he was really Elmine by birth. That was where he’d been born. Elman was closer to Naemia, that much I knew. Even a few of our own survivors were Elmine; could that be the reason? In some ways, I thought, he seemed just as coarse and hard and Vedish as the rest, but in others, not like them at all. Now his sarcasm came back to me, the quip he’d made about “darning socks.” No one even wore socks in this country.
Maybe, I thought. But how would he have known that there were Elmines in our number? Even the Vedans who had sent our settlements coal and provisions from across the River Elm in those years, had never spoken much with us. There must be more. Only twice I’d met him now, and yet under that armour of leather and metal . . .
No. I gave up on the thought. Just like the rest of the Vedans, the Chief Engineer was a stranger.
I stopped and listened to the breeze. Up ahead was an estate that overarched the cobble way with three orange squares from upstairs windows. Through the short underpass I saw the brighter lights of the Inner Gate, which would lead downhill through city streets to the warehouse where I lived now. No kind of home. My mind plunged back into the Deep and Rusper Symphin’s workshop. I clenched both fists, imagining a Disc inside each one, and resented the engineer. What had made him think, even for a second, that I could possibly be—
‘Coming back?’
I shot a glance into the shadows of the underpass. From a small stable on the right side, a horse stamped the straw and whinnied in its stall while, to the left, feet scuffed the cobbles and a human head bobbed up. Big eyes gleamed out.
‘Jerms?’
‘What are you wearing?’
Embarrassed, but stepping closer, I picked at the hem of the long shirt. This was exactly what I’d feared. ‘New clothes, that’s all. Someone gave them to me.’
‘Someone.’
“Chief Engineer” . . . “Viceroy” . . . These words would mean nothing. ‘He’s called Rusper.’
He snorted. ‘Ruster give you food?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted, wishing I’d lied. ‘But they should’ve brought food to the shelter too. Didn’t they bring it? The Commander—’
‘I don’t give a shit about your crazy commander!’ he shouted. I closed my mouth; there was never any reasoning with him when he was like this. And while it surprised me that he’d been willing to come this far all by himself, it unnerved me more the way he crouched there in the dark. He’d sat here waiting.
‘Jerome, come out of there please.’
‘Don’t tell me what to do. You’re always telling me what to do, Florian!’
‘Fine, sorry,’ I said.
A silence.
‘You think I’m stupid.’
‘I don’t think that!’
‘So why d’you keep lying to us? Saying one thing and then doing something else, huh? Why d’you have to keep on popping off up there?’
He was right. I had treated him as if he was stupid. And maybe, just maybe, I thought, he was.
‘Just tell me. What do those people want with you? And don’t you dare say it’s ‘cos of you puking on some sign.’
No, he wasn’t stupid. But I couldn’t tell him. Not this. He wouldn’t get it. I wasn’t sure I even got it.
‘Look, Jerms, it’s cold. We should get back. Con’ll be worried where we are. I’ll tell you about it later.’ I waited. ‘Okay?’
‘Not okay.’
He shuffled up off his haunches and stepped out into the light that reached us from the citadel walls. His eyes bored into mine with a disgust I’d never seen in them before, like hatred almost, and it scared me.
‘Con’s my brother, not yours,’ he said. ‘He’s not worried about you, doesn’t even care about you!’
‘Stop it!’ I snapped. It wasn’t true, I knew it wasn’t, but my throat still tightened to hear him say it. The horse in the underpass stable stamped again. This wasn’t good.
‘We gotta stick together, I told you,’ said Jerome.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘We will.’
‘You promised to stay away from them.’
‘I didn’t promise anything.’
‘Yes you did promise!’ I knew I had. ‘But I don’t care, Florian, not anymore. If you want to forget where you come from, then go ahead and forget but don’t come crying back to us when they don’t want you anymore.’ Turning, he stalked into the shadows of the underpass again.
I followed him. ‘Jerome.’
He spun back. ‘We can forget about you too!’ he bawled at me. ‘Leave us alone!’
‘Who’s down there?’
Light-beams I now knew as triglycerate shot out of the underpass stairwell. They shone on pipes that stuck out of the wall, looping and delving into the cobbles of the road. Jerome made a dash towards the shadows of the stable on the right, but the horse veered its great head towards him. He leapt back.
A man came down from upstairs wearing a nightgown and slippers. His lantern batted on a pipe. ‘What the blazing dredth is this ruckus?’ he demanded, looking straight at Jerome who stood before him. ‘A refugee, inside the Inner City? That pelkhing useless district watch, for all the honest tax I pour into the civic coffers, gah! Get you away and to your shelter right this instant!’
My friend darted away from him and out the other side of the underpass, while the man of the house crossed over to his horse. He stroked its snout protectively, but I could still see Jerome standing against the lights of the Inner Gate.
‘Away!’ the man shouted at him, sighting him too. ‘Before I summon the guard!’
Jerome bolted.
The man swung around to face me then, lantern-light rocking on the underpass walls.
‘As for you,’ he said, ‘servant. It is improper, your consorting with those refugee children. I might report to you to the Iron Shield for less—have your legs and arms tanned crimson for misdemeanour. Don’t tempt me now. Be on your way back to your lodgings at once.’
‘No sir, you . . .’ I stammered. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Dare you answer me, you little chidhik!’ he snarled.
I backed away from him quickly, understanding his mistake, all the while trying to think what my friend was going to say to Con. If it even mattered anymore.
‘Child, are you simple or deaf?’ He swayed as he barked right in my face; clearly enough he’d taken drink. ‘Back to your quarters—go I say!’
Unable to see any other way around the estate, I ran away from his lantern and his last threatening shouts; between the neighbouring manors, only slowing when I was sure he hadn’t called on someone else to chase and see me punished.
I retraced my steps.
Among the stately houses, now, there were no more people on the roads. More of the windows were dark. The air was cold and the palms swayed more ominously. Even the guards in the courtyard had moved off or stopped their talking. The gate into the gravel yard was locked and wrapped in chains; the yard empty. The shadowed scarf-men had gone too. They’d probably been the ones to shut and lock the gate, my own imagination turning honest workers into rogues who wished me harm. It didn’t matter: even if it had been open, the tall Deeping Door was closed as well.
I rattled the gate for no reason. A guard stepped into view at the other end of the yard and shouted something in so heavy an accent that I didn’t understand him. I took my hands off the gate, but hesitated a moment, wondering if it was best to let him arrest me right there. Maybe that way he would take me to the Captain like before, and from there to Rusper Symphin again.
Was I really thinking about that? Of going back to Rusper Symphin? The guard waved me back with his spear, and this time I understood his shout: ‘To your master!’
Maybe not. I left the gate and found the entrance to the barracks by myself. But because of the dark vennel that encompassed the steps up to the doors, I didn’t realise they too were closed until I was right in front of them.
Only one way was open: a road that sloped down into another, lower, district of the city. Not knowing what else I should do, my feet moved me on towards that gate, between the houses, terraced villas, long grey walls of windows with their tiny orange lights blinking inside. I heard the restless noise of many, many people in close quarters, listening as I walked, before I realised that this was probably where the evacuated people of Verunia had been put. I wandered on into the narrow, deadened veins of a marketplace. Empty, sleeping. Above the market, the fortress wall: between its fiery lights I saw the watchmen with their poles, all gazing out into the desert. None saw me passing through the market.
Behind the canvas of a stand I found a shelf, raised from the ground. A heap of tangled-up fishnets lay on the shelf. I didn’t care how bad it smelled; it was dry at least. “No more fishing parties to the coast,” someone had said, “so no more fish.” I pulled and stretched the scabby mass until it covered my body. The warmth came slowly, but it came.
Jerome’s words bled, now I was still, so I pushed them away and thought of Con. And that stung worse.
I couldn’t think about my people anymore, I hated it.
So I forgot about them. Forgetting the world, I drifted, dreamed: not of blood spilled in the river plain, or Erik and Sarah, or monsters in the place that had been home. Not of Naemia or Vorth, or the people of either.
I dreamed machines.