6

Their opulent cell had four bedrooms and a panoramic view of the canal behind the cathedral, though there was little to see with the Dome Luminous hidden by the smog and the canal choked with trash. Men on canoes plied the water, picking out scraps with long metal poles. Whenever two canoes met, they would link up to exchange their haul. One was often full of metal, the other what looked like green vomit.

“Ever tried canal moss?” James asked groggily. He had taken a long nap. “Bloats up in the stomach. Makes you feel full. Tastes like portobello if you cook it right.”

“How do you cook moss?”

“On a grill.” James gave her a weird look, as if the answer was obvious. “You said you grew up poor.”

“Not that poor.”

“Mm. When I was a kid, I sat in my father’s boat. Picked out the edibles. Not here. This one used to be clean. On the east side, near the boundary wall, where the gunk came out of the mines. The moss was thickest there.”

“Didn’t it make you sick?”

“Of course. The inside of my mouth would be covered in boils, and I shat blood once a week, on the Thursday. That’s when they let tailings into the water. But mushrooms were expensive, so. Cost me my intestinal linings, and they don’t grow back.”

“So how did you…”

“Each boat had a turf. Venture outside, and you were eaten. My father got away with it until he didn’t. They cooked him in a mirror vat, the thing alks use to preserve cadaver. Supposedly it imparted a strong flavour. They offered me a spoonful. Eat, they said, and I shall be anointed a member of their…I don’t know, gang, cabal, and they will leave me alone.”

“Lords Above.”

“What would you have done, if you were me?”

The idea made Sam sick, but not as sick as she thought it would. “Do what I’m told. Stay alive.”

“Yes. I did what I was told, and stayed alive. I drank the soup of my father’s bones and told them it was the best thing I’ve ever had. The boatmen clapped me on the back. They said, you are one of us now. Your father’s turf, it’s yours. I remembered being happy about it. Sick, isn’t it?”

“No more than…”

“No more than what we are now,” the Maestro said. “That night I added some gunk to the vat. Alchemical residue from the Guild of Preservation, Branch Seven. Then I went to sleep. When I woke up, all the soup was gone, and the boatmen were dead. You know what I thought then?”

“Why no one thought of doing this earlier,” said Sam immediately.

“Exactly. Even in the canals, eating moss and men, there was a line in the sand, and no one dared to cross it. They kept each other down with a…twisted code of honour. Slaves, shackling slaves. It was the only thing they could count on: comradery among cannibals. They could never imagine one born within their ecosystem might want to destroy it. That would be like…destroying the world.”

“That was how you…”

“Well, the story drags on after that, as they all do. How about you?”

“I grew up on a farm,” said Sam.

“And look at you now. Your father would be proud of you. Same as mine.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“What’s it like, being born a Finley?”

“Asking me? Really?”

“You know everything, Maestro.”

James laughed. “Imagine being born with all the money in the world, but to use it, you must jump hoops in a circus. There is a queue. Every person you are acquainted with is in that queue. Jump, the circus master tells you, and you jump, again and again and again, waiting, not for an end to hoops, but for everyone else to quit. Thing is, you consider everyone not in the queue to be inferior, so you can’t quit, no one quits, and you and everyone else keeps jumping forever, because jumping hoops was never a viable pathway to running the circus.”

“I think I get it.”

“You can quit today and become a Finley apprentice tomorrow. They will hire you just to spite me.” When Sam took a long pause, the Maestro laughed. “Seriously considering it. I like that.”

“Will I get a raise?”

“Funniest joke I’ve ever heard.”

“Then why would anyone want to work for him?”

James ran a hand through his hair. He seemed embarrassed. “That means more to me than you could know.”

There was a knock. Lucia opened the door. Jack the pyro had a band of mourning around his arm. He pulled up a chair next to the window. His face was carefully devoid of expression.

Jack Finley followed him in. He scanned the room, taking in the teak furniture, the view of the canal, the view of James slouching on the bed, hair messy from sleep. He clapped Lucia on the lower back – the highest point he could reach. “Good, good,” he declared. Even in private his voice boomed. “Cowen, what are you doing?”

“Napping,” said James.

“Why, you want to spend all night in this hole? Let’s go.”

James pulled on his cloak and followed Finley out into the hallway. Sam grabbed her satchel and made to follow, but Jack the pyro stepped in her way, grinning.

“What is this?” James asked.

“We have agreed to prosecute the apprentice,” said Finley, impatient. “The pyros will keep her in custody, and she’ll go to trial.”

“Lucia,” Sam called out. Lucia did not respond.

“Out of the question.”

“Cowen – it’s an apprentice. You’ll find thirty applicants in a day.”

The two Maestros stared at each other. Jack the pyro leaned down until his lips brushed against Sam’s ear. “You’re mine,” he whispered.

“You’re a tool,” said Sam, fighting with all her willpower to stay still, to not shrink away.

“Learn to enjoy yourself, Samantha.” The pyro leered at Lucia. “The giant isn’t coming to save you.”

“When I become Maestro, I will take your corpse to the mines, and you will dig for me. Forever.”

The pyro’s eyes swirled, black on black. “Hateful. I like that.”

“Cowen,” Finley barked. “I don’t have all day.”

James crossed his arms and showed no sign of moving. “You owe me,” he said.

“Looks to me like I just saved you a week of paperwork.”

“Do I look like I need help?”

“They say you killed their Progenitor.”

“So?”

“There are laws, Cowen.”

James laughed at that. A moment later, Jack did too.

“How many do you have on Twelve?”

“I have Lucia.”

“And you were going to do what, kill everything in front of you, then go home and nap?”

“Yes.”

Jack Finley gave Lucia a glance. His eyes, Sam saw, were a deep emerald with a thin rim of white. This man pulled the strings of millions of amblers across all twenty Floors, ran the largest and most influential House in the Pile, and with a snap of his fingers could turn whole Floors into amblers – this man was hesitating in front of James Cowen.

“You are breaking face with me over an apprentice,’ said Finley, spitting out every word. “You want to reconsider.”

James leaned in. “The Palace had you by your balls.”

Finley laughed, jowls quivering. “They don’t care what we do.”

“She took me to the office on a whim. Who else would she have told? Ingel? Catherine? You think this idiot –” James jerked a thumb at Jack the pyro. The pyro started. “– can keep his mouth shut?”

Finley glared at the pyro. “What are you saying?”

“You owe me. How did you get pre-approvals when the pyros are headquartered here? Were they going to burn down their own church?”

Finley was quiet for a long while. When he spoke again, his voice was warm and jovial. “Shame, what happened with the First Progenitor. She told me she was experimenting but…” he shook his head. “A tragic accident. If only there were witnesses, then they could tell us what had precipitated such a dramatic end to such a…fruitful life, fully lived. Shame.”

“Shame,” said James.

“Laws would need to be changed in this regard. If only we could extend the definition of cognitive residue, we might have discovered what happened.”

“Would be convenient, yes.”

“I’ll raise it at the plenum. You will vote on the side of justice, won’t you, Cowen?”

“Of course.”

“Good – so why are we still here?”

Jack Finley walked away. Sam stepped around the astonished pyro and picked up her satchel. She thought of saying something to him, a last biting remark, a smart retort, but that would be effort wasted on a worm.