The undersecretary’s flippant comment set Crecerelle off like a spark to kindling. The gorgon’s eyes widened, her snakes rattled their tails, and she began stalked to the lounging spider-woman like a warrior going into battle. “Blaming a gorgon is the oldest trick of you people at the top! You sit around all day, pointing your fingers at us, blaming us for all of our problems, while it’s you who keeps us down!” Cress punctuated her arguments with jabs of her finger as she drew closer.
The undersecretary smirked and strummed her web with her many legs. “It’s just inertia – something that starts at the bottom tends to settle there. She leaned forward slightly.”There are plenty of gorgons who succeed though – you just need to work within the system.”
She leaned back and sighed dramatically. “Unfortunately, someone like you doesn’t seem to be able to understand that much.”
Even Bel could see that Cress was being goaded into a confrontation, but by the time the words had left the undersecretary’s mouth Cress was no longer thinking rationally. The two of them engaged in a frantic shouting match, as if they were vying to spit out words faster than louder than the other. Orseis quietly pulled herself out of the pool and slunk over to Bel, and by mutual consent they retreated to the far side of the room. Their translators were frantically converting words and phrases, but they reached their limits as they simultaneously attempted to translate two people yelling over one another while also explaining the intricacies and nuance of some of their turns of phrase.
The end result was Orseis immediately searching the area for food, her tentacles pulling open drawers and reaching into cabinets in rapid succession, feeling around for anything interesting. She pulled out and discarded several items before passing around a small, off-white puff from sucker to sucker. She considered it seriously for a few moments before popping it into her mouth.
“Maybe you shouldn’t eat random things,” Bel chastised her.
Orseis gave Bel a side-eyed look before pulling out a small bucket of the bite-sized puffs and shoveling a tentacleful into her mouth. “Why not?” she munched at Bel, “they’re delicious.”
Bel sighed, turned back to the argument, sighed again, and then took one of the puffs. Her eyes widened with surprise as she bit down. “Oh! It’s like someone trapped something like and fluffy and covered it in salt! It’s nice!”
Orseis rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that’s what I said.” She turned back to the argument. “Any idea what all this is about?”
Bel shrugged. “I think that people may look down on gorgons down here. That was the impression I got from the giants. I don’t know why she’s antagonizing Cress though, it seems unnecessary.”
“Maybe she’s setting us up?” Orseis ventured.
Bel popped another few puffs into her mouth. “That doesn’t make sense – why would she rescue us then?”
Orseis crammed a mouthful of puffs into her face, determined to eat more than Bel. “Dunno,” she said before chews. “Maybe she was acting on orders?”
The loud blast of a horn finally brought an end to the argument. The undersecretary quickly picked herself up and began fixing her hair, deftly putting it back up with her long hair ornaments. “Well, that was a lovely discussion, but Stion has asked me to rush you straight to him,” she declared.
The undersecretary brushed past the still-seething Cress and pushed the cabin door open. She gestured for them to follow as she ambled out.
Cress stomped after her. Bel and Orseis shared concerned looks before they also followed through the door and into the stiff breeze that permanently blew through the open plains. From the cabin’s perch on top of the airship they had an unrestricted view of the free city of walls. That perspective revealed to Bel the origin of the “walls” part of the city’s name. She had previously seen how the city was divided into layers, but from the top she could now see that walls cut through the layers as well, further slicing the city into small compartments. For anyone living or passing through the interior of the space, walls were all they would see.
The city was unique, or at least Bel had never seen anything like it. Waste was tossed behind the city, to be recycled back into the soil by whatever passed by. She could actually see a herd of house-sized beetles streaming along in the city’s wake, picking through the refuse produced by the population. If she peered into the distance, she could make out the discarded bits of the giant creatures captured by the city: shards of enormous snail shells, piles of offal, and the occasional bone stuck up from the otherwise flat expanse.
The city itself was lively, even chaotic. Every space seemed to be filled with people; walking, running, or flying, they were all in motion, like the city itself. Bel looked up and inspected the horizontal sails that pushed the city ever forwards. “I wonder if James would be impressed, or if his world has stuff like this.”
“Oh,” a reedy voice piped up from beside her, “I’m sure he would be impressed!”
Bel jumped in surprise; she hadn’t heard the small, bearded man approach. Even with his tall, pointed hat he only came to her waist, and his eyes were covered in a pair of spectacles that carried multiple lenses on rotating gears. Currently, one of his eyes bulged through a thick piece of glass while the other one was dulled by a gray-tinted lens. Bel held back her laughter when she was several tools caught in his long, gray beard. Her initial surprise was quickly dispelled by his harmless appearance.
“Who are you? And how do you know who I was talking about?” she inquired.
“Oh,” he peeped, “my apologies! I’m Martinus!” He laughed as he tugged on his beard. “My parents wanted me to grow up big and strong, but living in a city like this one how could I resist being an engineer!” He gestured to the sails and the gears of the legs below them and then flicked his hand towards new construction on the end of the spine. “Who wouldn’t want to be involved in all of that!”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Bel nodded. “It’s great. But, uh–”
“Oh, by the builders, I’m sorry! I happened to be looking at some of our ongoing transcripts when I saw you complaining about your communication device!” He pulled his spectacles from his face and rubbed at them with a cloth that he pulled from one of the many pouches hanging from his waist. “I would love to take a look at it. And if you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to talk to your brother too!”
He squinted up at her. “You were telling the truth about him, right? It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to pull a fast one on me.”
Bel waved her hands quickly. “No, no, James is a real person and he’s really from the Old World.”
“Wonderful!” Martinus exclaimed.
“Unfortunately,” the undersecretary cut in, “she is in a rush.”
“But–” Martinus began, but his voice faded from her hearing as Bel was suddenly ripped through the air by one of the undersecretary’s strands of silk. She glanced to the side to see Orseis in a similar situation. Behind them, Cress was pumping her wings to keep up, her face as dark and angry as an oncoming storm.
A moment later Bel and Orseis were unceremoniously spilled onto the polished marbled floor of a luxurious palace. The undersecretary pulled on her webs and darted off into the sky before Cress could touch down.
“Are you two okay?” she called out with concern. “When I find whoever asked for this treatment, they’re going to get a piece of my mind.”
“That won’t be necessary,” a deep voice replied. It’s owner stalked into the courtyard, revealing a body more than twice Bel’s height and longer than five or six of her stretched out, counting the long tail that counterbalanced his muscular upper body. His arms looked strong enough to tear her apart, but were comically small compared to his powerful skull and long, sharp teeth. He was wrapped in an ornate robe of shimmering colors and on his head he wore a small red cap with a golden tassel that was completely out of place on his enormous skull.
“The undersecretary was enjoying a bit of autonomy, I’m afraid,” he rumbled. “Delegation is the bane of all centralized governments.”
He waved a short hand, drawing Bel’s attention to a small, ornate club held in his claws. “I am Magistrate Stion, the democratically elected dictator of the city for the next few thousand days.”
“So she was being a jerk on her own?” Cress asked.
“Is that why she ran away?” Orseis added.
Stion waved the club in what Bel realized was his version of a shrug. “On her own? I think not. But it is certainly part of why she ran away.”
“Now–” he began.
“There you are!” Martinus cried. He circled overhead, supported by a pair of wings that stuck out of a large pack on his back. He pulled a lever, which caused the wings to tuck in an propel him into the ground at a dangerous speed.
With a deftness and delicacy that belied his bulk, Stion plucked him from the air before he could hit the ground. “Martinus, you always seem to appear at both the best and the worst possible times. Since you are here though, I’m giving you a command to stay with us. I may have need of your expertise.”
“Huh?” Martin said distractedly as he stuffed the wings back into his pack, “oh sure, stick around, okay.”
The moment he crammed the last wingtip into his pack, he hopped over to Bel. “Give me your communication device, quickly, before something else pops up. I want to get working on it right away.”
Bel frowned. She did want him to fix it, but she didn’t want to risk losing her only link to her brother.
“His appearance leaves many things to be desired, but he is quite good with his hands. He is on our board of continual improvements, actually.”
Bel shrugged and began unscrewing her earring so she could hand it over to him. I suppose it isn’t much use if I can’t actually talk to James, she consoled herself.
“For a disciple of Stabilis, you’re quite accommodating of change, aren’t you?” Cress asked, skeptically.
He waved his club again before turning towards a large doorway. He gestured for them to follow as he replied. “Stagnation leads to collapse. My aim is to achieve a perpetual state of improvements that prevent the wild oscillations that come from reckless improvements–”
He paused to gesture at Martinus, who had eagerly accepted Bel’s earring and was examining it under the magnification of his spectacles. He reached into a pocket of his shirt and pulled out a small tangle of wires, which he proceeded to tap against Bel’s earring.
“–and to also prevent the decline and collapse that come from those who refuse to change.”
“That sounds smart,” Bel said quickly, before Cress could start picking another fight. “So why did you want to see us?”
“Well,” he began, “it is sometimes safer at the eye of the storm than in the thick of it. I would also be interested in hearing of the Old World. One never knows where you can learn something interesting.”
He turned to them twirled his club. “I’ve found that it’s always best to go into stressful conversation on a full stomach, so I hope you won’t mind dining with me this evening. There will be another guest as well.”
He glanced at Martinus. “Two guests, I suppose.”
“We would love to,” Orseis shouted gleefully.
Cress and Bel rolled their eyes at the younger girl’s enthusiasm.
“Is a conversation really going to be that stressful?” Bel wondered.
Stion huffed, a loud snorting rumble that made Bel’s bones shake. “Unfortunately, these things have a way of growing messy.”
“These things?” Bel prompted.
“Anything involving the pantheon,” Stion replied. “Nobody wants to touch it, and the more you know the worse you are sometimes.”
He thrashed his tail with agitation. “First, all the old folks go on vacation so that I’ll take the blame for any bad outcomes, then my subordinates try to sell me out, and now I’ve got emissaries from more nations than there are pillars in the sky.”
Martinus’ yelp of joy cut through the sudden tension. “I’ve got it,” he squealed.
He waved Bel’s earring at her, only it was now joined to a small golden clasp by a finger-length chain of shimmering material. “This’ll increased the frequencies supported while also improving the signal quality and battery lifetime! It wasn’t a bad bit of innovation, if I’m being honest, but the execution of the original was downright shoddy. Whoever made this was a complete amateur.”
“Uh, it was a rush job,” she explained lamely, not adding that the original rush job had taken multiple prototypes and a few months of work. Bel accepted the earring back and quickly attached it to her ear.
Stion shook, his large, toothy muzzle as he glanced at Martinus, who was completely immune to the mood around him. “What a growing mess,” he muttered.
“Sell you out?” Bel asked with concern, her mind replaying Stion’s earlier words.
“My undersecretary was trying to get some juicy bits added into your transcripts, you see. It doesn’t capture the tone of your voice, just your words, and she is rather adept at making the other party sound exactly as she wishes. She’ll be running around the city now, convincing our native gorgons that you’re all extremists who are here to corrupt the youth and convert them to a dangerous, evil goddess.”
Bel’s snakes twitched at the implication. “Hey! My mom is maybe a bit dangerous, but I don’t think she’s evil.”
Stion laughed, the sound menacing enough that Orseis turned white as a cloud and began fading into the background. “Don’t worry, the local gorgons will eventually come around to her, I’m sure. Too late to help you, though.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cress jumped in. “If you want our help with something, you should let us go out there and talk to the local gorgons first.”
“It’s not that I want much from you,” he stressed, “but there are others who are obsessed. And they would like a word with you.” He turned to them, his large eyes glancing at each of them in turn. “Over dinner.”