“And then what?” Dezi leaned forward, eyes bright with curiosity over her glasses.
“Well, uh, he cooked me dinner.” I felt vaguely embarrassed saying it, though I had no idea why. We were eating lunch on the bottom floor of Walker’s office, using a spare desk as a table. Ms. Sanverth was out sick, so we had the whole floor to ourselves. I’d mentioned where I’d been yesterday, and Dezi immediately asked for a play-by-play. At first I’d been a little annoyed, but there was a good chance I’d do the same if our positions were switched- and to be honest I kind of wanted to brag.
“He can cook? As in, real food?”
I nodded. “He caught the fish himself.”
“Right! Someone that cooks for you…” She leaned back in her chair, grinning at me. “That’s kind of personal. I think it means he cares.”
“Does Rhoann make you food?” I asked her after swallowing another arpaste dumpling.
“No, we’re both more likely to burn down the kitchen! Whatever my parents have, I didn’t get a drop of it.” Her smile grew softer. “He writes me poems, though.” I almost laughed on reflex, then felt bad when I saw the expression on her face. “He won’t show them to anyone else- but he trusts me with them.”
“That sounds…really nice, actually.”
“It is. You really have to meet him sometime. Oh! But I got us off track.” That sly look I was familiar with came over her face. “So what happened after dinner? Did you just shake hands and go home, maybe?”
“We talked for a while and I spent the night! Is that what you wanted to hear?” I nearly crossed my arms in a huff before realizing I’d rather finish eating.
She actually thought about it. “I- huh. When you put it that way, it’s kind of a gross question. But- it was a good date? All of it, I mean?”
“Yeah. It really was.”
“That’s great, Sharkie. I’m happy for you.” What would have been a basic platitude from anyone else sounded heartfelt coming from Dezhda, and I couldn’t help smiling back at her. “Now, let me finish this and I’ll tell you what we’ve found.” She forked up her pad siew in record time, then opened up the heavy folder that sat beside her.
“Walker’s had us looking into that strange arm ever since you found it,” she began. I remembered it still, though the memories were slightly fuzzy due to my state at the time: a torn-off arm made of woven metal thread, impossibly complex. Blue Division had traded it to the Fomorii gang from K-block- or they’d tried to, before Fidi and I showed up. “At first we couldn’t find anything, but a few days ago DD and Stripmine made a breakthrough. They managed to slice into the Antonin University archives.”
“Wait, for real?” That was the fancy Vitroix school where Admin families sent their spoiled kids. I only knew about it from movies.
She nodded eagerly, eyes bright. This stuff excited her as much as fighting did me. Same instinct expressed a different way, I figured. “Yup! For real. And you wouldn’t believe all the stuff we’ve found. They hide so much from us, Sharkie. They don’t want D-block knowing another way of life even existed once. But anyway. Before I start, I have to tell you that none of this is for sure. Did you ever make rain sculptures when you were little?”
“Yeah…?” I thought most kids from D-block had. You’d stick a bunch of stuff together- broken toys, scrap electronics, trash, whatever- and then leave it out in the rain, the more severe the acid warning the better. When the rain stopped you’d go out and see what dissolved and what hadn’t. If you got lucky the acid would melt and etch the sculpture in pretty or interesting ways.
“Me too! Trying to get to get good information out of this stuff is like taking an acid sculpture and trying to figure out what it looked like before.” She tapped a hand pointedly on her folder. “So much is missing and you have to guess as best you can what it was.”
“Dezi, I promise that whatever you found you did about ten times better than I would.”
“If you say so,” she laughed. “You remember a while ago, I told you about the Woven Men?”
“I think so. You said they fought in the Lastwar, but otherwise nobody knows what they were.”
“Mm-hm. We’re starting to get an idea, though. See here…” She pulled a plas-paper printout from the folder and turned it so I could read it. “This is from the correspondence of a Dakessar monk who lived right after Lastdusk. It seems like they argued a lot while they wrote the Sacrificial Record.”
“Damn.” Whoever wrote this had seen the end of the Lastwar, the martyring of the Ten Kings, Earth’s final sunset, even the writing of the Dakessar holy text- all stuff that was basically myth for a non-religious person like me. “So that makes it how old?”
Dezi frowned. “Well, we aren’t sure, at least with what we’ve found so far. There’s a bunch of stuff from the Lastwar and even before, and some from just after Lastdusk…but after that there’s a gap until two or three hundred years ago, and who knows how long it was. It’s possible those records are further restricted - supposedly the samurai families all have private libraries - but if I had to guess, I’d say that things were just so bad nobody had time for writing books.”
I was no historian or literary maven, but I loved reading all the same. “That’s a scary thought. Sounds like we’re lucky we got back to this level at all. Such as it fuckin’ is.”
“It spooks me too, Sharkie. Just thinking about those people, trying to live in the dark, everything they knew gone…to be honest, it’s kind of been keeping me up at night.” Now I looked, there was a slightly haggard cast to her face, a bit more frazzle to her brown hair than usual. It was hard to notice, since she was, well, Dezhda, but it was still there.
“If you need a break, Walker’s not the kind of boss to say no-“
“Nope! Nope! I’m fine, I promise. This is exciting stuff, it’s just heavy sometimes. Okay, back on track…here. That highlighted section.” She pointed to a few lines on the printout of the ancient monk’s letter.
“It must be said that the Woven were fearsome in battle indeed,” I read. The text was small but my SKH-Thayer eye picked it up with perfect clarity. “‘Their skin of metal thread was supposedly impenetrable. I believe they were made by an exo-solar Luminary, though I hesitate to guess at which…’ Huh. What do they mean, ‘Luminary?’ I mean, I know the word, but it sounds like a title.”
“That’s the impression I get, too,” Dezi said, flipping through some more printouts. “It shows up a lot in Kest’s writings, and a lot of the other primary and secondary sources. I’m pretty sure it just means someone powerful, someone with a lot of means, or a big army, or who’s just really strong or smart. In a lot of these documents the Ten Kings are called the Ten Luminaries of Earth instead.”
“Ah, makes sense.” The Ten Martyred Kings were supposed to have been the next best thing to gods when they were alive, with plenty of wild feats to their name: Battles against impossible odds, huge achievements of science and engineering, even changing the geography of Earth itself. A lot of it was religious exaggeration, I was sure, but those stories had to start somewhere.
“Once we figured that out we kept looking for references to the Woven. Like here. This is a letter that the Vice-President of something called the Deepwell Mining Syndicate wrote during the Lastwar. ‘Joining the Marshal’s armies is a contingent of Woven Men. They-‘ something something something, there’s a lacuna here - ‘and reaped a fearsome toll of Enemy when they fought beneath the Artisan of K’enna, who is their maker.”
“Never heard of the Artisan.” The name niggled at me for some reason, though.
“Neither have I, or Stripmine or DD, but it was another clue, another few things to search for. And then we found the jackpot.” From within the folder she removed a single sheet, this one a picture of a paper book rather than a printout. The following page was covered in typed text, probably a translation from the weird ancient alphabet the first was written in. “The University has a few fragments of Kest’s Modern Humanity.”
“Holy shit.” Even I knew about that one. Before he’d gotten around to founding his eponymous religion, Kest had been a famous wanderer and chronicler. He’d been all over the galaxy, if you believed humans had really gotten that far before the Lastwar. Modern Humanity was supposedly his greatest work, a running journal of his travels across the stars - one written without the layers of esotericism and mystic obfuscation that marked the later Book of Kest. It was a long-lost book, though - or at least that’s what we thought in D-block.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Right? It’s just incredible! I-I’m still getting angry just thinking about it, though!” She kicked back in her chair, arms crossed. “Admin’s had it all this time and kept it from us…why? Do they think we’re too stupid to care? Or are they just that petty?”
“They’re fucked up either way,” I growled. “Every time I think they can’t get worse, I find out something new to prove me wrong.”
“It’s just-ugh. I can’t stand it. Anyway. This fragment is only a couple pages long, and here’s the important part: ‘Upon our successful translation to K’enna’s envelope, we were greeted by the sight of a great plethora of ships at the orbital dock, including the new Symphony-class dreadnought Mahler’s Ninth. Soon our vessel rendezvoused with a surface-to-orbit barque crewed by the mysterious Woven. Not being occupied with the usual spaceborne drudgery of docking and descent, I spoke with them briefly and learned something of their nature. Only the most trusted servants of the Artisan are selected for the Weaving process, and amongst that rather cultish group it is seen as the highest honor.’ And from there it’s mostly whining about how uncomfortable his cabin was.”
I snorted. “That’s funny.”
“It’s amost endearing, you know? Like a reminder he was human.” Dezi set that paper aside too. “But that tells us the Woven probably weren’t robots or something. They were made out of people, I guess, not built? Maybe Admin wants to replicate the process.” I shrugged. “From there we found a few more interesting things. This is a message from some kind of emergency communications grid. Like the Net but across space, I guess? We think the translation’s accurate - or at least the university did.”
This sheet only had a few lines on it in big block capitals: ‘ENEMY AT KENNA SYSTEM STOP EST 35/100 POPULATION EVACUATED BEFORE LOSS OF SURFACE STOP CONVENTIONAL FORCE CASUALTIES EST 67/100 STOP WOVEN AND L/GRADE CASUALTIES EST 96/100 STOP L/8 GRADE SOPHONTS SYNOROS AND SHAPER ENGAGED IN FIGHTING RETREAT STOP EST FULL CONVERSION WITHIN 3 CYCLES STOP KENNA IS LOST STOP UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES RETURN REPEAT UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES RETURN STOP STOP STOP’
“Well,” I said after a moment. I glanced down at the few dumplings I had left and decided I didn’t feel like finishing them. “That sounds like something out of a horror movie.”
“It’s not the most, um, comforting reading, that’s for sure. We have no idea who Synoros is, but Shaper kind of means the same thing as Artisan.”
“And it mentioned K’enna and the Woven.”
She nodded, ponytail bobbing. “Enough evidence to make an educated guess they’re the same person. Or sophont, whatever that means.”
“It just means a thinking, self aware being. Or it does in sci-fi books, at least. What?” I added when she gave me a funny smile.
“Oh! Just, I forget you’re into those sometimes.”
“I know I don’t look like much of a reader,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck.
“That just makes it cuter,” she said with a smirk. “Right. Only a couple more. First, this fragment of a report, which supposedly came from the Ten Kings’ seat at Himalaya.”
“Damn.”
“Right? It says, ‘… now the Vajra is reported lost with all hands. Combined with K’enna’s fall and the atrocity at Last Stop, it seems that the Artisan’s star has finally fallen. The Iron Armada no longer responds to our hails, but Yamagh could still be dispatched.’”
“So the Ten Kings wanted this Artisan killed?” King Yamagh the Shadowlord was said to have been a superlative assassin, and the Iron Armada sounded like Ironstride the King of War would be involved.
Dezi took a sip of her water and nodded. “It sure sounds like it, though we couldn’t figure out why or what this ‘Vajra’ or ‘Last Stop’ were.” She sighed. “And this is the last thing we found, and probably the strangest. It’s another letter from a monk, even older than the first one. The alphabet almost looks like Kest’s writing, see?”
She slid me another photocopied document. It showed a rough-edged piece of paper, rife with tears and holes. “What are they arguing about this time?”
“Lastdusk, and the Opheiic Mandala.” I frowned, impressed. The Mandala had ended the Lastwar and the Sun Age all at once, and the Ten Kings themselves had sacrificed their lives to activate it - it was how they got martyred in the first place. As for what it actually was and how it worked, though, even the religious books didn’t say.
“This guy says, hmm…” she continued, pushing up her glasses. “‘That the Kings of Man were there is established. What must be addressed at our Council are these pernicious rumors of others present at the Death of Sol. Amongst my parish I have heard it claimed that any number of Kest’s daemons were present, along with the traitor Marshal of Cygnus, the arch-heretic Ratio-Synoros, the Sculptor of vanished K’enna, and even the anathema Inrë-“
“Wait, wait. Did you- did you say ’Sculptor?’”
She looked up, surprised. “That’s what he wrote, yeah-“
“Shit. There’s no way, right?” I muttered to myself. What had my so-called sister Arcadia told me when we’d finished up putting holes in each other? We were made by the same person. Not in the conventional way, of course. The Sculptor. Learn some history, would you? I slumped back into my chair so hard the poor thing creaked.
“W-what? Are you okay, Sharkie?” Dezi half-rose from her chair, giving me a concerned look over her glasses.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s- You remember a little while ago, I got attacked by that crazy jo-san that said she was my sister?”
“Yes. Right.”
“She told me she was made by someone called the Sculptor. That we both were.”
“That’s - wait. What did she mean, made?”
I shifted nervously. “Mmm…” I’d never told her about my little tungsten issue - but she was my friend, right? And with her doing all this research, maybe she could help me figure out more about it. I decided to trust her. “Alright. I gotta tell you something weird, Dezi. A little after I started working for Walker, I got this cut on my forehead…” I explained how we’d found out my bones were made of impossible space metal - and that they’d apparently been that way from the start.
Dezi listened with rapt attention, and when I finished she sat back with a thoughtful look on her face. “Um, first of all- Thanks for trusting me with this, Sharkie. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
“Thank you, Dezi. Seriously.” Feeling touched, I smiled at her and she returned it.
“No worries. But - do you mind if I do some research on this? On my own time, by myself?” At my nod she broke into a grin. “Good. But now, the other thing: I mean, there’s no way Arcadia was talking about the same Sculptor, right? It’s got to be a copycat or something, someone who’s just using the name.”
“That’s what I’d think…but people lived longer during the Sun Age, right?”
“Some of them could. Science and medicine was a lot better. I mean, the Ten Kings ruled for centuries, supposedly…” She trailed off, obviously thinking to herself.
“This stuff is way out of my league,” I muttered. Didn’t I have enough to worry about without being tangled up in Sun Age conspiracies?
“Don’t you want to get to the bottom of it, though?” asked Dezi. It was easy to tell what her answer would be.
“Yeah, but sometimes I’m not so sure.” Just as I said that my slab buzzed. I had a text from Walker: finaly done. get on up hre.
“Well, that’s my cue,” I said, standing up. “Thanks for all that, Dezi. I’d be freakin’ lost without you.”
“No problem, Sharkie!” She got up too, leaning against the office’s doorway. “A few weeks ago I’d never have believed this is what I’d be doing.”
“You’re good at it,” I told her. “Whether it’s the accounting stuff with Ms. Sanverth or this. Even if you didn’t end up here, I think you’re smart enough you’d succeed. Probably take over Dag’s business or something.”
“Ha! I can’t even imagine.” She glanced downward. “It’s selfish to say, I know. It’s dangerous, and there are a lot of things the Holy Bones do that, well-“
“I know what you mean.”
“Yeah. But even with all that? I like this job. It’s interesting and hard and it makes me think, and I feel like I’m doing something that matters.”
“I-that’s good, Dezi. I’m glad.” I was, but I was also conflicted. It was because of me she’d gotten this job. Her being my friend had already put her family in danger once. I wasn’t even sure what I’d do if something happened to her, and thinking about that possibility almost made me dizzy. “I better go see what Walker wants, though. Have a good one. And those dumplings are yours if you want ‘em.”
“Don’t mind if I do. Thanks, Sharkie! See you later.” She gave me a brief hug and went back to the desk as I headed up the stairs. This was the other reason I’d come down to Walker’s office. He was finally going to talk about our next mission, the one he’d gotten from Boss Moses himself at the Runes meeting.
Upstairs, I went down the hall and into the cloud of smoke that obscured the door to Walkers office. The huge old floorboards creaked as I walked over and plunked into one of the big chairs in front of his desk. The man himself was kicked up with his boots on his desk, smoking while he looked out the window. Based on the room-filling fug and the plethora of coffee cups scattered about, he’d been here a while.
“Sorry ‘bout the wait, Sharkie. Been on the slab wranglin’ with Silas Pitchblende.” He snorted. “Kingsdamn lentil counters.”
Silas was sort of the Bones’ treasurer, if I remembered right. “You trying to get money out of him?”
“That’s right, and wouldn’t you know it but he don’t wanna give me any.” He rolled his eyes. “Took an hour of flim-flammin’ and strokin’ his ego afore he agreed to pay up for this mission.”
“Why doesn’t Boss Moses just make him give you the deng? Didn’t he give you this thing personally?”
He blew a fresh gout of smoke through his nose. “Yeah, but that’s kinda the funny thing about the Bones. Blue Div’s like a military. Whoever’s on top, their word goes. Quarrymen, though, we don’t take well to followin’ orders. Never have. Boss Moses starts carryin’ on like Commander Canra, well, people’d get resentful real quick.”
Ah, I got it. To some degree Boss Moses only kept his authority because the people under him believed he wouldn’t overuse it. “So he’s kind of in a balancing act, trying to herd cats.”
“Those’d be the most pertinent metaphors, yeah. ‘Sides, if I had to call him and bitch and ask for help every time I needed somethin’ done, well, I wouldn’t much deserve my position.” Letting out a long sigh, he stubbed out his burner into the precarious pile of butts that filled his ashtray and took a swig from a big jug of water behind his desk.
“Is that an uncaffienated beverage, boss?” I asked, cracking a smile. “Going on a health kick?”
He gave me a flat look. “We can’t all lift weights ’til our palms bleed, Sharkie. Sometimes it’s all I can do to keep from dryin’ up and blowin’ away in the wind like a roach-husk. Anyway. I’m sure you’re excited t’hear about our special mission.”
“I guess so.”
“Well, shit. Calm down, woman, you’re gonna give me a heart attack.” I couldn’t help snickering at that one, and he smiled as he went on. “Well, you’re gonna have to wait a tad bit longer. We got an appointment to make.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Who with?”
He winked. “Admin.”