3

The Dome Luminous brightened into noon. Heat rose from the pavement in palpable waves. The clientele in this part of the city preferred palanquins or litters or rickshaws at the least. James, however, out of sheer stubbornness, preferred walking. His face was pale and flush all at once. Sweat drenched his hair and ran down his chin. Lucia half-carried him on one arm, but that was all the assistance he allowed himself.

He pointed to a shop on the corner. AUTHENTIC BEEF! The sign declared. “Table twelve,” he muttered.

The blast of refrigerated air invigorated him; the sight of Maestro Ingel devouring a stack of ribs straightened his back and put a grin on his face. He strutted to the table with all the bravado of a man freshly woken up from a twelve-hour nap.

Ingel looked up. “Were you followed?”

“The butler.”

“So it’s true.” He clicked his fingers and four servers appeared at his elbow. “Sirloin, medium-rare. And more wine.” He waved them away before they could utter a word. “It’s annoying how they try to speak. The hospitality sector is difficult to penetrate. Too much uh…”

“Health and safety?”

“Nothing more hygienic than tier-four preservatives, Cowen. I just enjoy watching them grovel for tips. Where’s the giant?”

James sat. “Counter-butlering.”

“Not going to be an incident, is it? Yesterday was ugly.” Ingel eyed Sam as if she were a cut of beef. “You take her everywhere.”

“Where are yours?”

“Procurement. Studies. Charts. My apprentices have a hundred things to do before they get to stand there looking stupid.”

“She spares me from explaining basic things to stupid people. Try it. Might elevate your brand.”

“What if she’s bought?”

“Then I’m a sucker and you are too.”

“I don’t get it. You talk like you don’t give a shit and yet here we are.”

“What, having lunch?”

“And you think you are clever but –” Ingel tossed a bone onto the floor. “- you are an idiot.”

“I’d rather be known for my compassion and my sense of justice.”

Ingel laughed, spitting marrow juice everywhere. “And? Is that bullshit getting me my two million units?”

“Want a guarantee?”

“I want certainty.” The sirloin arrived on a platter bigger than Sam’s desk. Ingel jabbed his knife at it. “Know how much this costs?”

“Should I?”

“No, but you paid more for it than you are paying her.” Ingel jabbed his knife at Sam. “Jack Finley can put down a slab of mutton and it’ll be more than you’ve paid her this year.”

“But he won’t.”

Ingel downed his wine in one gulp. “They’ve poached four of my apprentices. Offered them a whiff of meat and they went over without a ‘thank you for having me’. Hurts a man’s feelings. Makes him rethink the meaning of friendship.”

Sam was suddenly sweating.

“Your problem,” said James.

There was fury in Ingel’s eyes, charm and marrow on his lips. “You think she’s got your back? What can you give her that they can’t? The moment any of these graduates see an opening they are going to leave you shitting your pants wondering where all your friends are. Loyalty is a bygone concept. We’re too rich for it.”

James frowned, there and gone. “Your problem.”

“You going to eat that?”

James shook his head, and Ingel yanked the sirloin onto his plate. “You’ll remember what I said when she runs off for an extra ten-percent – and it will bother you. Everything bothers you.” He tore into the steak like a man starved. “You don’t have time to pretend, Cowen. How long do you have left?”

“Am I dying?”

“Are you not?”

“Not soon enough.”

Ingel laughed. “Businessmen like me, one can tell at a glance what my priorities are, but you – you are playing a game. We all want entertainment, fair enough, but you don’t got time to fuck around, do you? So what do you want?”

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

“To die in peace, in my mansion, surrounded by those who love me,” said James, sipping the wine like it hurt him. “You?”

“Some men want to live forever,” said Ingel, “and some men envy that.”

“One fantasy at a time, Maestro Ingel.”

“I like my pleasures.” Ingel chewed. “Food. Women. Money. You get me more, you are my friend. You dangle me on a rope, make excuses, deprive me, waste my time, and I will ruin you. It is that simple.”

“Your point?”

“Give me two million units from Twelve, and you and Catherine can scheme all you want, play your games, I don’t give a shit, but your priority has to be –”

The door banged open. Lucia entered with a fleshy bundle, dripping infusion all over the floor. Her flawless complexion was marred by an angry welt across the cheek, her coat torn in a hundred places, the chainmail underlay half-shredded. She dumped the bundle before the Maestros’ table and set a pair of purple-stained spectacles next to James’s wine glass.

Ingel leaned over, smacking his lips over a particularly tough morsel. “Is that the thing?” he asked, chewing. “Where are the legs?”

The tux clinging to the ambler’s body had been shredded down to strips. Its face had been pummelled into pulp, but its eyes of faceted glass were still intact and hanging out by their fleshy tendons. Infusion leaked from the stubs of its limbs, far slower than usual.

James crossed his arms. His grin was mocking, his eyes dead and terrible. “What do you think is happening here?”

“I thought nothing in Jack’s portfolio could touch your…”

“Lucia.”

“Lucia. Yet here we are.”

The thing on the floor flopped like a fish and lunged at James’s ankle. Its ruined jaw almost made contact before Lucia put down her foot and crushed its skull with a brittle clink.

Ingel devoured the last of the sirloin and clicked his fingers. Four servers appeared at his elbow, their expressions painfully pleasant. “Soup,” Ingel said. “Make it thick. Cowen?”

“No, thank you,” said James. His coat was splattered with bits of putrefied brain but he did not seem to care. He nodded at Sam.

Sam opened her satchel and wrote TEN THOUSAND on a pre-signed cheque marked with the sigil of the Palace Above. The servers took it and within two minutes returned with a basin of soup loaded with mutton, then they flipped the sign to CLOSED and retreated to the kitchen, probably forever.

“You like this place?” asked Ingel.

“Never been here before,” said James. “The menu’s not for me.”

“You can’t leave that thing here. They’ll know who did it.”

“They already do.” James tapped his fingers on the table, once, twice, three times. “It is like you said. I don’t have time to fuck around. This coming plenum is our final chance, and it is too late to form a unified opposition.”

Ingel listened and said nothing, his soup untouched.

“Frankly, I don’t care. Jack and I collaborate on a broad range of mutual interests.” James tapped his fingers, once, twice. “Our partnership has been convenient, but the way things are going, they won’t need me for much longer, or anyone else. Monopoly in our lifetimes – you love to see it.” Lucia bowed. James reached out and examined the red welt on her face. “Those who protest authority usually have nothing better to do, or are dying, and think some sort of cosmic righteousness will, I don’t know, give their lives meaning. Funny, isn’t it? A necromancer, concerned about the living? That is the wrong priority.”

“My two million,” growled Ingel.

“You will get it. You don’t care how.”

Ingel nodded, satisfied. He kicked at the cadaver on the floor. “You can deal with these things?”

“Lucia can.”

Ingel shook his head, apparently unimpressed. “It took damage.”

“She was autonomous. If I – ” James’ face drained of colour. He flipped through his pockets in a hurry.

“Inside, left pocket,” said Sam.

“Excuse me.” The Maestro stumbled to his feet, box of pills in hand. Lucia carried him into the restroom.

Ingel slurped his soup with the gusto of the emaciated. “You. Sit.”

There was no one else in the restaurant. Sam sat, carefully avoiding the pool of congealing infusion. She was exhausted even though arguably she has done nothing. Up close, Maestro Ingel looked older than she had expected. There were liver spots on his cheeks, his forehead, dampened by powder but now visible from his profuse sweating. “So,” he began, “how does he do it?”

Sam smiled and waited for him to elaborate.

Ingel chuckled. “Here’s what I’ll do.” An ingot of copper appeared on the table. It was the length of a hand and unmarked. “This is yours if you tell me who coded the giant.”

“I’m not at liberty to say, Maestro.”

“You can have ten more if you share some insights into its autoroutine package.”

“I cannot.”

“You are familiar with tier-five autoroutines, are you not? It’s part of your core training. If it’s a matter of price – name it.”

“I can’t.”

“What is it that you want, apprentice? A house on Twenty, isn’t it? You can live in luxury or sell it and be set for life. I am offering you that house without the burden of eight million lives on your conscience, and all I ask is that you tell me what you know about that ambler – how he made it, who helped him, what he’s doing with it. A very good deal, I think.”

“I…” Sam closed her eyes for a moment. The man who had once been her father stared at her indignantly. His eyes were azure. No, that was the little girl’s. Her father’s had been…she has forgotten. She has never tried to remember. “Only what I know?”

Ingel nodded, his silence overbearing.

“He…” Each word weighed a ton. Her lips were parched. “It’s not a…” What was it like, on the Floor of Six? An old woman, laughing in her face. She had cried on the way there and on the way back. The lift was full of blood. An intestinal defect. Half the cadavers had shat out their guts. The smell, she could still remember. She remembered wishing to never smell anything again. That one came true.

She did not know much, but she knew Joran Guiyu, and she knew what T’Lia did in the lab. Talk, and never again would she need to burn a city, blockade a shelter, raise the dead for money. It sounded like a dream. It was a dream. When she lied to a little girl with azure eyes, told her to go down to the shelter, that it will keep her safe – she will dream of it, every night, on Floor Twenty or Twelve. Something about guilt giving life meaning.

“Maestros own everything,” she heard herself say from across the room, “and if I’m not a necromancer, then it won’t be my house, even when I own it. I’m sorry.”

Her decision was made, and the silence remained. Ingel put down his spoon and burped. “I see why he keeps you – you are not delusional.” The ingot disappeared as if it was never there.

The servers cleared the table and presented the Maestro with a mushroom-shaped souffle drizzled in caramel. Ingel pushed it toward Sam and stood up with some effort. Sam, surprised, scrambled to match.

“Tell your Maestro we see eye to eye,” Ingel said. “I wish him well, I do. But business must go on. You have received an offer from Robert Finley, have you not?”

Sam started. “I…I’m not…”

The Maestro laughed, his eyes sad. “Cowen, you son of a bitch.”

With that, Ingel swaddled over the twitching former butler and stepped out. The huff of a steam engine faded into silence, and Sam was left alone with the distant and indecipherable rumblings of James’s bowels.