3

Beyond the confines of the central rotunda and its rigid halls, the Finley estate was a maze of dead-end corridors that throughout the centuries have morphed into a labyrinth. Young Jack, the sixteenth of his name, declared that it took an hour to walk the shortest route from one end to the other. James clutched his stomach as he walked. For one who sometimes threw up porridge, downing that whiskey would be equivalent to swallowing daggers.

They arrived at an opulent suite overlooking the crescent lake. A pneumatic capsule stood by the door with a tuxedoed ambler inside. A diamond Command Ring sat on the bedside table.

James scowled. With a sound like ripping paper, Lucia tore the capsule from the wall in a rain of bolts and plaster. The terrified teenager barely jumped out of the way as she threw the whole thing into the corridor, carving a trench on the floor.

James grabbed the Ring, went to the balcony, tossed it into the lake. He turned on the boy. “Get out.”

“I-I-I-’ Little Jack’s acne grew flaming red. “I’m supposed to show your apprentice to the – apprentice quarters. Three thousand rooms –”

“Get out.”

The boy ran off terrified, slamming the door behind him.

James sat down. Beads of sweat ran down his chin. “What are you doing? Meds.”

Sam started. She scrambled to take out the pillbox from her satchel. It was larger than her clipboard and three inches deep.

Two minutes passed in silence. The Maestro began to relax, his face slowly returning to pleasant nothing. “I thought Robert made that up to provoke me.”

“I meant to tell you.”

“Told me everything else.”

“I –”

“I mean, I knew.” He laid down and gesticulated. “They are poaching from every House. Luckily, I only have you. But against my better judgement I had convinced myself that she wouldn’t do that, and if she did she would tell me. I should never doubt myself. I am always right.”

“He – Robert – said he would kill me if I refused.”

“You miss the point. You do what you need to do to survive. So do we all. But that’s not the problem. Communication is the problem. If I can’t trust you –” a pause “- what is the point of keeping you? I can hire anyone to run errands and write letters. Why do I need you? Look at Ed. He is incompetent, but he’s indispensable to the operation of this place, because you can count on him to be exactly what he is. What are you?”

Sam wished, more than anything, to crawl under the bed and stay there, but against every instinct to hide she held her head high and kept her voice level. Her eyes felt rather wet, very wet, but James was staring at the ceiling, so this was fine. “I apologize, Maestro.”

“I do not accept it,” said James. “All you had to say was, ‘Maestro, Robert tried to hire me’. Takes no effort at all. The only reason you would keep it from me is that you entertained the idea.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“I apologize.”

“Elaborate, please.”

“I…” Sam did not know what to say, let alone how to say it. How can she explain that when she closed her eyes she saw a little girl with azure eyes, not her father’s eyes but they were the same, both dead and both once a part of her, and that she wanted to run from them, forever? It had nothing to do with it. It had everything to do with it.

“Speak,” James snapped.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Sam blurted out. “I want to quit.”

“And go work for Finley?”

The idea made her gag. “No! No, I…I don’t want to work for anyone. I just…had enough of…of everything. I want to go home.”

James laughed. “Home? To that bunch of…sitting meat on Twelve?”

“No, not them. Home.”

“Where is that?”

“I…I don’t know,” said Sam. “It’s not a place. I just want to…stop, and…go away. I don’t want to think about…this.” She flapped her arms uselessly, indicating nothing and everything. “I want…I don’t even know. It’s like I’m fighting, all the time, and I don’t even know why, I haven’t even done anything. I can’t do anything, yet somehow, I’m always busy. I never know where I’m going yet I’m running, all the time, to places I don’t want to go.” She could feel the tears now, falling fast. “I don’t know how to explain. I don’t know what to do or…where to go or…what I want. I’m not even sorry about not saying anything. I’m not. It just…happened, and I didn’t mean to offend you, or him, or any of the…but it…I don’t know how to handle it. I just want it to all go away.”

That was a terrible explanation, but it was too late. Her career was over. James was going to fire her. Being a blacklisted apprentice was the same as being dead: she would be unemployable. A position coveted by millions, a future of untold wealth and power and influence, thrown away. She would have to go back to the Floor of Twelve, and sit in her father’s old farm – which her aunt now owns – and wait for the harvest. Or she could lie down and die. It was all the same.

A rustle of cloak. Lucia knelt so their faces were level. Sam took in the details of Lucia’s blindfold, the intricate copper threads, the way the curvature of her eyes pushed up the fabric. She had an acute sense of being examined.

“I was like you once,” said James.

“You are a lot smarter than me, Maestro,” said Sam, drily.

“Catherine terminated my contract three times. I had an attitude problem, apparently.”

“I don’t…” Sam shook her head. “I don’t care.”

“I was younger than you when I met Lucia,” said James, to no one in particular. “I was…frolicking. She came up with a lamp and shone it in our faces and was a creep about it. Didn’t say a word. Just stood there. I told her to go away, can’t you see we’re busy. And she said,” he swallowed. “She said, ‘I don’t know where to go.’” He laughed. “I didn’t know at the time she was Catherine’s…what was it, great-great-granddaughter? I just thought she was weird. Can’t put two sentences together to save her life.

“And me, I never stop talking. So I don’t know how or why or when or what kind of hallucinogenic fungi made me spend time with her instead of any number of…” He chuckled. “It was the strangest thing. She could just sit there, listening to me go on and on and I would just…go on. A kid from the canals in the middle of princelings on the Floor of Seventeen – there were no happy stories, only violence. She was there for all of it. Why did you stay with me, Lucia?” He asked, and Lucia shook her head. “You see, that, that – I made her do that.” The Maestro sat up in a rush. “But that’s not what Lucia would have done. And that is the crux.” He laughed. “I don’t understand her. I can recite every invoice I’ve issued since I was fifteen, but I can’t replicate the way she looks at me.

“My point is, Sam, it doesn’t matter where you are or where you are going, because it is too late to change your mind. There is only one thing you can do now to influence your career. Tell me – what do you want, more than anything in the world?” Sam opened her mouth but the Maestro cut in. “If you say a House on Twenty or buying Madam Tian’s, I might actually fire you.”

Sam was surprised that she knew the answer. “That pyro, Jack.”

There was a glint in James’s eye. “Yeah?”

“I want to beat him up, like you did.”

“Just him?”

“Also, Charlie, for treating me like a kid. And…and,” Sam swallowed, embarrassed. “I want to beat up a lot of people, for making me do things I don’t want to do.”

“Including me?”

“Especially you, Maestro.”

James laughed. It was a pleasant sound.