5

James clicked his fingers. The corpse bolted upright, its head lolling to the left. Yellow fluid trickled out of her ears, her nose. Her eyeballs seemed half-melted, oozing out of their sockets.

“The primary tether is taken,” said James.

“What do you mean?” the woman asked innocently.

“This cadaver was discarded by its previous reanimator.” Sam said. “This increases the difficulty of subsequent reanimations.”

“Intriguing, isn’t it?” the woman beamed. “No one else knows she is dead.”

“I didn’t come up here to play your games,” James snapped. “I’m leaving.”

“She left you a proprietary device in her will. Why did she do that?”

James left the room before she could get in another word, Lucia on his tail. Sam, caught off-guard, hurried after them, but the Maestro had slammed shut the door, and mahogany was heavy.

“Samantha, come here a moment,” said the woman.

The sound of her own name terrified her. “I…no…sorry.”

“I oversee the auditions. Every apprentice who wants a career must do as I say.”

Sam wanted to scream. All she had planned to do was show up for five minutes at a stranger’s funeral. “What do you want from me?”

“Men are naïve. They think they know everything there is to know, but when they glean the abyss they cover their eyes and run back to their mansions, and they bury themselves in money until they are blind or dead. The most heinous of crimes they will commit, and they are guilty always, because guilt is good – it gives meaning to their pointless lives. How about you, Samantha? Are you blind, or dead?”

The half-congealed eyes of the First Progenitor quivered in their delirium. The Green effervesced from the corpse’s fingers. There was ink under its fingernails. Its thumb was twitching, still pulling the strings of a hundred thousand pyromancers.

What was its job, exactly? Jack Finley would send a letter, detailing which Floors to burn and when, specifying that pyromancers must be led by necromantic apprentices – who knew nothing about alchemy or combustion, who on a good day could barely walk ten miles – and all it had to do was obey. It did not need to be alive.

“Was she happy?” Sam asked.

The woman gave her a look. “What a strange question.”

Sam waved at the mahogany shelves, the big window, the view. “I just thought she might have preferred… I don’t know. Something else. I have a window just like this one, in my room. Smaller, dirtier, but I sit at it and look down at the people below, and it’s never a happy thing, but I still do it, because what else is there? There’s just you, and the window, and the people telling you what to do.”

The woman’s face showed nothing, but Sam could tell she was annoyed. “You seem confused, Samantha,” she said. “I am not your friend.”

The doors opened. Lucia barged in with Jack the pyro under one arm. Jack was sweating. His abyssal eyes were bloodshot, mad. He smiled at Sam. The flamespitter was slotted into a harness on his arm. “The Maestro knows best,” he said, and notched the slider all the way down.

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A stream of blue-fire poured over the mahogany desk with such force, it went flying even as it turned to ash. The throne and the First Progenitor slammed into the window, and with a crack like thunder broke through in a ball of fire. The spire shook. The massive bookshelves jittered and fell. The hefty tomes had blank covers and blank pages. Props.

The windblast made her deaf. Sam could see every single strand of the woman’s hair. Black they were, and frozen in place. The shockwave had sent her tumbling, but her hair remained impeccable, and when she stood up, she was giggling.

Everything in a two-degree arc was obliterated. The desk, the body, the chair, the window – all turned to ash and ejected onto the streets below. Jack casually restored the slider and shook the canister like a can of beans. “Still got some left,” he said. The fire seemed to have revitalized him. “Here,” he handed Sam the flamespitter. “The Maestro would –”

Lucia dropped him onto the floor. Sam managed to snatch up her satchel before Lucia grabbed her by the collar and kicked down both doors on her way out. The woman called out, “See you soon, Samantha! Nice to meet you!” but Lucia was already in descent, leaping twenty steps at a time.

Sam laughed all the way down.

James was waiting for them in the atrium, surrounded by a gaggle of pyros. He pointed at the staircase. “Go, quickly. The Second Progenitor needs your help.” They dispersed at his gesture, half of them not even pretending to go where he intended.

Lucia propped Sam onto a bench and patted the creases out of her coat. “Here, have a bagel,” said the Maestro. “Sorry for leaving so suddenly. I had to pretend to be offended,” he said.

“There was a quill under her chair,” Sam said between bites. “Ink under her nails. The bread inkwell thing is Ingel’s idea. You are supposed to replace the bread every day, to show how rich you are.”

“And how old is the bread, pastry expert?”

“A week.”

“I thought I taught you how to examine corpses.”

The gates of the cathedral swung open. A dozen fusiliers, marching in single column, made a beeline for the hidden staircase. Pyromancers of all ranks swarmed around them, shouting and jostling and arguing. They avoided paying James any attention.

“They’ll think you killed their boss,” said Sam.

James laughed. “My acquaintances all seem to think that I am brewing some scheme to upset the establishment. Do I give that impression?”

Sam watched the fusiliers disappear into the alcove. The pyros stayed behind to gossip. The atrium was full of them. Voices reverberated under the disapproving gaze of the Prime Progenitor, loud and indecipherable. “A little bit,” she said.

“The agent from the Palace Above. How did you like her?”

“She said she is in charge of the audition.”

“She is in charge of nothing, and cares for even less.” A pyro tried to approach them, a sheepish look on his face. James stopped him with a glance. “She plays detective because this world is a game to her and she is bored.”

“She knew you’d come.”

“She knew I would entertain her. Did you know there are sixteen Second Progenitors? It’s an executive candidacy. The most suitable is chosen by ballot to succeed the First. Jack was never winning that vote.”

“No,” agreed Sam.

“But now he might. Look.”

A large procession of pyros – thirty, forty men in white robes and flame-patterned masks – approached the Maestro from every direction. They walked slowly, afraid of stepping in front of each other. Still, they came all the same. An old man with a doughnut bald patch cleared his throat and extended his hand. “Maestro Cowen.”

“Pleasure,” said James, not offering.

“Stars Beyond Twilight. Do you like it?”

“The what? Oh, the mosaic? Yeah, sure. I love art. I’m a patron of the arts. It’s beautiful. Was thinking of getting one for my lab. Show off to my clients.”

The pyros laughed nervously. The old man wrung his hands. “Maestro Cowen, I’m afraid we…we might have to ask you to…remain with us for a while.”

“The Progenitor named Jack can tell you what happened.”

“Yes, he…he is quite adamant that your ambler here –” the pyro glanced at Lucia with plain terror. “– was the instigator.”

“I am quite busy, you understand. I have a large batch coming in tomorrow on the Floor of Three. Need to be there.”

“Yes, yes of course…but I’m afraid…”

“You don’t imagine you could keep me here.” Lucia stepped forward a single step, and the pyros retreated three.

“No no, we’d never dare –”

James laughed. His voice boomed across the atrium. The eternal flame sputtered. “I’m kidding. I will stay until this matter is resolved. You have rooms?”

Palpable relief washed over every pyro’s face. “Certainly. Rooms. The best. This way, if you would allow me. And your apprentice –”

“Stays with me.”