5

The House of Dawn’s monthly profit exceeded eight figures on the third of July. James celebrated by purchasing eighty-eight properties across the Floor of Seventeen. For two months, Sam’s desk became a cesspool of real estate agents, bankers, financiers, guilds looking for vacancies, alks looking for rooms, and all manner of tagalongs who had declared themselves allies of the House of Dawn overnight.

Maestro Enri sent an entourage of carpenters and architects, promising to renovate every house for a moderate commission; T’Lia tried to investigate the safe with a crowbar; Charlie presented a bouquet and a revised technical manual featuring two dozen corrected grammatical errors and clever edits to inject humour. Sam thanked her, and procured prostrations of future discounts.

All eighty-eight deeds remained on Sam’s files for all of ten minutes, long enough for James to sign them, then they were carted off to a secure deposit. Sam has never seen the places they bought. Neither has James.

Sam managed to retain two thousand seeds for herself through a variety of rounding errors. They were now stashed under her bed, inside a box marked SUNDRIES. She was under no illusion; James noticed these things. He just did not care.

As the goldrush dwindled, the House of Dawn returned to a semblance of normalcy. It was the last week of her life that Sam could remember being bored: waking at seven, breakfast, prepping the office, the lounge, at her desk by ten to nine, scheduling work, expenses, correspondences, running a hundred odd errands – the mundanity of routine, pursued with a bored zealousness, felt almost comfortable.

~

There was a scar across Bant’s neck, as if someone had tried to cut off his head. He sat in the lounge, ranted about the economy, and left a cheap-looking card that spelt CONGRATS in colourful fungi.

James took it into his office and re-emerged wearing a coat with chainmail inlays and gloves threaded with silver. He presented Sam with a Command Ring with a topaz inset larger than her thumb.

“What are we doing?” Sam asked.

“Wear it.” Charlie’s box opened with a soft hiss. The Maestro had chewed through the technical manual in about twenty minutes and then left it as a paperweight for his transmittances. “Flaunt it.”

“Where are we going?”

“Follow Lucia.” James pulled himself into the box and struck something near his elbow. The box sealed itself. His voice, channelled through elaborate pipework, was nearly drowned out by the ventilators. “This is…snug. If I uh…asphyxiate, just bury me in it.”

Lucia strapped the box onto her back as if it weighed nothing, then turned toward Sam, waiting.

Sam shrugged and put on her walking shoes.

~

Electricity was once produced by steam engines the size of houses – outlawed now, of course, and unnecessary when amblers could spin turbines cheaper than steam.

“This is our last commercial power station,” said Bant, indicating the subterranean cavern full of gigantic copper disks. Thousands of amblers kept them spinning with a network of turnstiles, pedals, and gears. “The House of Solutions decommissioned the rest.”

“Did you kill anyone the other day?” asked Sam.

Bant frowned at her. “Where is your Maestro?”

Sam patted the box. Bant frowned at it. “What, is he dead?”

“You got to speak up,” said James, his voice muffled and metallic.

Bant frowned until his brows conjoined. “What is this?” He jumped as the box hissed open and James fell out like a corpse. “Why are you in a coffin? Is this a joke?”

“It works!” said James. “Less talking, more going where we are going please. It stinks in here.”

A defunct power junction on the far side of the cavern opened at the press of a lever. Cables thick as limbs ran along the tunnel walls, converging in a cavernous room deep in the bowels of Seventeen. Hundreds of oversized incubation vats rose from the floor like pillars of basalt. An alchemist in unmarked overalls gave Bant a clipboard riddled with numbers. Bant dismissed him with a look.

In the centre of the room, where all the cables converged, sat a four-poster bed and a headboard thick with nodes and dials and blinking lights. Around it gathered a small crowd decked out in emerald-and-gold. Maestro Enri stood out in her purple mantle, clutching a half-knit sweater like a shield.

“Come closer,” she said. “She wants to look at you.”

Maestro Catherine Pierre stirred from her nook among the pillows. Tubes and needles dotted her left arm. A ledger in Braille was cradled in her right. She tapped her nail against the binding. It made a bright ding, louder than any bell. A blue light began to blink on the headboard. Her voice was softer than a whisper and perfectly clear. “You may begin.”

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Bant cleared his throat. “There is no easy way to say this. The Madam has made the difficult decision to terminate her own life.” The crowd muttered. “For one hundred and seventy years she has watched over the House of Verdancy. It is her child, and we are her family, but two centuries is too long a lifespan for one whose loved ones are gone.” Bant looked each of them in the eye. “She has given us one final task. The Madam cares not for legacy, but the redemption of our souls.”

“No such thing as souls,” muttered James, too quiet for anyone but Sam to hear.

“There remains none in our House who can maintain our current portfolio. It is shameful to admit, but my colleagues and I could manage but a combined one hundred thousand tethers. The Madam has made the difficult decision to transfer the remaining four hundred thousand to Maestro James Cowen of the House of Dawn –” the crowd muttered louder. “– on one condition. His portfolio shall join with ours on the Second of September. While the plenum of the Houses is underway, we, the combined portfolios of the House of Verdancy, the House of Juniper, and the House of Dawn, will sabotage and destroy all Finley assets from Floors Three through Nine.”

The silence was absolute. James’s expression was unreadable. Enri drank from a hip flask.

“You will appreciate the logistics involved in this undertaking,” Bant seemed calmer than he has ever been. “I will brief each of you in private, but know that this is the Madam’s final wish. We, her family, will see it through. I have sent instructions to your stations. Return to work and begin preparations immediately.”

The employees of the House of Verdancy lined up before the Madam’s bed, taking turns clasping her hand and speaking soft words. A few had even begun to cry. They filed out in twos and threes, holding each other.

Bant stuck out his hand, and James shook it. Enri patted the young necromancer on the shoulder. “Good. Well done,” she said. “Where is the restroom?”

A woman in emerald-and-green took Enri’s arm and led her away. The room emptied, but James remained. As the last footsteps faded in the distance, red lights began to blink atop the incubator vats. The closest opened its shutters and spilled out a gush of infusion. James frowned at the eight-foot giant stepping over the congealing puddle. “No one’s buying that,” he said.

“I thought I was pretty convincing.” returned Bant.

“No one plans an insurrection two days in advance. They are not idiots.”

“Mmm. Disagree,” said Bant.

“A formality, for old times.”

Bant hurried to the Madam’s side, checking the headboard. “Volatile emisisons are off. I’ll have the room sanitized right away,” he gathered up a stack of papers and made to leave. “Stay put, Cowen. She wants to talk to you.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

Bant squinted at Sam. Sam shook her head. With a shrug, he rushed off and closed the tunnel behind him.

The Madam beckoned. “Lucia,” she called.

Lucia went to her and held her hand. The headboard bleeped out an alarm and was quickly silenced.

“She misses you,” said James.

“She misses nothing. She is dead.”

“I am trying, Catherine.”

“In vain.”

“Some encouragement would be nice.”

“Forgive yourself, as I have forgiven you.”

The ledger fell to the floor, spilling its pages. No one cared.

“No, you haven’t,” said James.

A cool breeze swept by Sam’s feet. Motes of dust coalesced into little piles by the corners of the bed, and the lights burned a little brighter. The giant rummaged around an alcove and returned with scrubbers and a bucket, then began cleaning its former residence with surprising diligence.

“How many?” asked James.

“Enough.”

“How do they stand against the Finley prototypes? The butlers?”

“I don’t care.”

“You will need Lucia’s help.”

Lucia bent down so the Madam may lay a shrunken finger against her face. “No. Keep her safe.”

“I am not asking,” said James. “You want to kill yourself, that’s your prerogative, but you don’t tell me what to do anymore, Catherine.”

“If only I could.”

“And what you would say? Give up?”

“Forgive yourself.”

“And how would I do that?” James laughed. “I make eleven million a month, the richest man on Seventeen, thank you very much. I shit blood every morning – hard to enjoy that, but I get by, modern medicine has a hundred varieties of painkillers. I try my best, every day, to take pleasure in my work. On some days, it is hard. On others, easy, because I get to sit across thirty Maestros from thirty little Houses and tell them exactly how to stay out of my way.”

“I am not telling you to enjoy yourself.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Yes, you do.” The Madam rolled her eyes as far as she could. “Do not make me speak, it is exhausting.”

“No one makes these –” James pointed at the vats, “- out of forgiveness. Now tell me what you are planning so I can help you.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel sorry for you. Because I got nothing better to do.”

The Madam grinned. It was a gruesome sight. “What irredeemable attitude.”

“Ever regret taking me in?”

“Every day.”

“You could have just...not.”

“It is worse to be alone.”

“Should have left me. I would’ve ended up on Fifteen, with the House of Stupendous Poverty, and you would have someone else watching you die instead of a man who doesn’t shut up,” he glanced at Sam, “and an apprentice who never speaks.”

“I would have Lucia.”

James swallowed. “She is still here, I know it. I feel it.”

“Do you really?”

“What do you want me to say? That I should die now, for my life is without purpose?”

The Madam sat up. Green overflowed from the milky white of her cataracts, pouring from the ends of her snow-white lashes. “Let it go.”

“I am a better necromancer than you will ever be,” said James. “What is the purpose of my genius, if not for this?”

The vats around the room spun all at once, hissing on their gimbals. A carpet of steam blanketed the floor as hundreds of muscle-bound giants emerged from their incubators. The floor trembled as they marched into formation, each picking up scrubbers and buckets along the way. Then they began to clean. The pools of congealed infusion were mopped up, the walls passed over with cloth and sponge.

James wrinkled his nose at what Sam guessed was bleach. “Are you making a point or is this just for fun?”

The Madam gave him a withering look, her rheumy eyes suddenly brimming with Green. “Are you done?”

James laughed. “For now.”

“Then listen.”