3

A velvet rope hung across the entry with the sign NO AMBLERS BEYOND THIS POINT. A Finley ambler stood on the other side with a handbasin and a stack of towels. Its face, infused with preservatives, shone like polished marble.

Sam dipped her hands in the basin and laughed as ash turned to mud. “Nice weather today,” she said to Lucia. Lucia said nothing.

She loosened the filter on her mask as she passed the buffet, hoping to smell at least a tinge of the pulled pork. Nothing. Having spent far too long in the company of volatile reagents in James’ lab, and despite all her precautions, her nose could no longer distinguish formaldehyde from water. It was an uncommon defect even for those in the alchemical guilds. She had been bitter about it, once, when she had fewer things to be bitter about.

The partygoers recoiled at first, for the apprentice stank of ash and sulphur; but her colours made them smile, but by then Sam had already passed, and they were saved from having to maintain the effort.

James sat with his feet dangling over the cliff and the tail of his coat pooling in a puddle. Although he was no older than thirty, the Maestro’s hair was dense with grey, his eyes ringed with circles so dark they looked like bruises.

“How were the pyros? Fun?”

“No,” said Sam.

The silver crescent of the palisades shone on the horizon. The Maestro waved at it. “Do you prefer the mines?”

Sam closed her eyes and saw the children in their patchy uniforms, skipping down the decline. She saw the girl with azure eyes looking up at her. Are you a Maestro? the girl had asked.

“No.” She held out her clipboard. “I have the numbers. Ten thousand adults. I have noted their age and desirability.”

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“What?”

“Desirability. The Handbook uses that word to denote physical attractiveness.”

“The Handbook.” The Maestro flipped through the list. Cursed with photographic memory, he needed only a single glance to memorize them all, then he tore the pages into little squares and slipped them over the edge.

“If they ask, you lost it in the riots.”

“Yes, Maestro.”

A single red flair rose from the palisades. High though it flew, it reached not even one tenth the height of the Dome Luminous.

“Delays.” James gazed at the red dot as it fizzled out in the darkness. “Do you know why everyone wants to go to the Floor of Twenty?”

“To see the sky,” said Sam.

“Why? What’s so good about sky?”

Sam shrugged. A migraine was growing behind her right eye, radiating needles of pain into her cheeks.

The Maestro shrugged back. “You would have lived your whole life on a Floor like this one, had I not found you. Your corpse would have made me thirty thousand seeds a year. Instead, you may become a necromancer – the foundation of our society – and live a life others envy. The recipient of such good fortune should be more inclined to gratitude.”

“I am,” disputed Sam.

“They are.” He nodded at the Finleys. Everyone in that entourage wore identical, orange-trimmed suit jackets with pins in the shape of the cartoon skeleton, seen here sitting on its pelvic bone and reading a book. Maestro Jack Finley, a man wider than he was tall, lounged on a divan the size of a double bed. Wherever he looked, his entourage looked; not a word he could utter without enduring protracted adulation. As he held out his hand, no less than five cups of wine were offered to him, but he was simply pointing at the fading flair. A hundred voices groaned simultaneously, perhaps to say that they, too, were disappointed.

“Do you want wine?” Sam asked.

James laughed. “You will eviscerate the buffet and never come back.”

“I will come back,” said Sam.

The Maestro’s eyes were grey-on-grey and shine-less, like those of a blind man. Specks of Green glittered in the featureless expanse of his iris, so small a blink could unmake them. Sam could never quite meet his gaze; though his voice has always been pleasant, his eyes only ever resembled the abyss.

“Do you want to quit?” he asked.

The question caught her off-guard. She opened her mouth and closed it without uttering a word. Her hesitation was answer enough.

“You think about that,” said James.