6

The Dome Luminous brightened into dawn. The last of the merchandize disappeared into the lifts, taken to alchemical guilds scattered over a dozen Floors. The alchemists went next, huddled together in their exhaustion. Everything they did here, the dead could have done, yet still they came, and partied, and lingered long after their tasks had ended.

The turnaround from cadaver to ambler was around three weeks, during which a complex, cross-guild workflow preserved the internal organs; reinforced the bones, the skin, the ligaments; replaced blood with proprietary infusion; and linked the encoded tapeboxes to the seventh thoracic cord. Each Guild conducted their work differently. Each jealously hoarded their techniques.

During this time, the Maestros usually went on vacation.

Jack Finley shook a round of hands as he was leaving. His cousins – the three Eds, James called them – were occupied with bookkeeping, what with eighty thousand new amblers to manage, but such trivial work was beyond Jack’s concerns.

“Good work, well done, yes, see you after the break, thank you all for coming,” he repeated, all gravitas gone. Only Maestros and apprentices were left. No more grandstanding. “Cowen.”

“Jack.”

The pyros had established a perimeter around the premiere lounge, but the fire had taken half the building anyway. James sat on a bench at the edge of the destruction, wine glass in hand. He raised it in salute as the VIP lift departed with the Finleys inside. The glass was empty.

He beckoned at Sam. “That the last of them?”

“Yes.”

“Come, meet my co-conspirators.”

Maestro Mina En appeared to be knitting a sock. Senior Associate Moeffe Bant had buried his face in a book titled REVOLUTIONARY ECONOMICS. Neither seemed particularly keen on networking. They looked like they have been waiting for a lift their entire lives.

“Send her along, will you?” En said without looking up.

“My apprentice has my full confidence.”

“Not mine.”

Sensing the moment, Sam offered her a not-very-secret flask of gin. En partook with vigour, her sock forgotten. Bant looked up with disapproval. “I thought we were to have a serious discussion,” he said, his voice like chiselled bricks.

“We are worms,’ En declared.

“Worms with agency,” said James.

“Finley pinpointed my attempt in a day, and I have no idea how. That man has two million tethers. He can’t possibly be that sensitive to all of them.”

“Four million,” Bant corrected.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

“And now we know what not to do,” James shrugged. “What about the Madam?”

Bant closed his book. “My employer speaks highly of you, Maestro Cowen.”

“Only behind my back.”

“She is following the consolidation procedures as you have advised. It is not going smoothly. I must ask – how did you create Lucia?”

“Must you ask?”

“I have a right to know.”

“The Madam knows Lucia better than I.” Blades slipped into James’s voice. Sam shivered. “If she has not told you, then you have no right.”

Bant flushed red. He clicked his fingers. Two amblers stepped out from the eaves. The emerald-on-gold jackets of the House of Verdancy could barely contain their augmented muscle mass.

En frowned. “You are embarrassing yourself.”

“My apologies, James Cowen, but I need to understand why the Madam trusts you so implicitly.”

“Graduates,” James scoffed.

Lucia stepped into the lounge with a marble pillar. She set it down before the lifts, and the ground shook.

“Souvenir?” En queried. “You don’t strike me as poor, James.”

“Can always be richer.”

Stone-faced, Bant pointed. The two amblers charged at Lucia, bounding twenty feet in a single leap. James yawned. A blur of cloak and sleeves. Lucia has them by their heads. She clapped. Skulls burst. The amblers swung their fists like nothing happened. Lucia tossed one and kneed the other in the abdomen. With an awful tearing sound, the ambler split in two along its spine. The other flew a hundred feet into the far wall, knocking down what remained of the ticket booths. The ceiling caved in, burying it completely.

After that, the young necromancer became a lot more amicable, even taking a swig from Sam’s flask. “The Palace Above keeps approving these harvests. Why?”

“Stop it. Never consider the bigger picture,” En said, knitting furiously. “A young professional such as yourself should focus on becoming a Maestro and getting your own contract.”

“That’s good advice,” said James. “Only players get to complain about the rules of the game.”

Bant looked angry. “The auditions are full of Finleys. Soon they will have enough necromancers in-House to forgo contractors altogether, and we will be relegated to the old ways, haggling with the grieving for their departed –”

“Don’t be such a spout!” En threw down her stitching in a huff. “Ours was a noble profession! My grandmother, may she rest in peace, had her own little shop on the Floor of Ten, and every morning I went out to pick up the broadsheets there would be letters thanking the Lords Above for her work in the community! They loved her! They loved! The only Maestro on the whole Floor!”

Under their collective astonishment, En emptied the flask in one gulp.

Bant ignored her. “You may be in a position of advantage for now, James Cowen, but look at us. We’re chums. We break our backs for a pittance when Jack Finley can snap a finger on Twenty and make every man his slave. Does that seem fair to you?”

James shooks his head. There were dark circles under his eyes, his skin more sunken and flaky-looking than the day before. “I remember talking like you. No wonder I had no friends.”

“You think you are playing the long game, but you are just a sycophant. No wonder Jack Finley allows you ten percent. He owns you.”

“I assure you – I have noble and righteous intentions. I just act like an ass.”

“Children, please,” En sighed. “We are all going to the plenum, yes?”

“Part of my contract,” said James.

“The Madam will attend in person,’ said Bant.

There was silence. A pleasant ding announced the arrival of a passenger lift – no VIP suite, this one, but still full of leather divans.

James spoke slowly. “Is she well?”

“Truthfully – no.” Bant sighed. “She is pushing a hundred and thirty. Her mind is sharp, but…”

“She told me, years ago, that the next time I see her, she would set me free.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” He looked up. “Sam, do you know?”

Startled by the sound of her own name, Sam struggled to form a coherent sentence. “She would…let you quit, I guess.”

They stared at her. Even Lucia leaned in. En barked a sound that was half amusement, half hysteria. The Maestro seemed disappointed.

“If only I could.”