6
Paramedics came on at the Floor of Twelve. They cleared the bodies away and gave the apprentice inside the ambler cage weird looks. Alks in a dozen colours waited by the corpse wagon with reams of contracts. By the time the last of the intestines were washed off the floor, most of the bodies were gone, carted off to a guild somewhere. The lift then chimed cheerfully and moved on to the upper Floors.
Sam let herself into the House at half past midnight. A pile of letters sat on the floor. She tried to avoid them and somehow ended up falling face-first onto the carpet. Her mask, a mangled mess now, rolled into the corner, and she let it, like she was letting herself. Her head was pounding. The migraine stabbed hot irons into her right eye, the spot where it always began and never quite ended.
She was sobbing into the floor, Sam realized. Her face was hot, rigid; it felt like her ears were ringing but they weren’t. All sorts of goop were pouring out of her nose, her mouth. Her arms shook, her hands grabbing at the threadbare carpet, pulling at handholds that do not and never have existed, and there was nothing to hang on to anyway – she was alone. Every horror, every cruel game she had witnessed and played today were hers to internalize. There was no one to turn to. Her father was dead. She had no father to begin with.
She could hear noises in the lounge. James was orating again. Guests past midnight. They needed tea, probably. Her shift was over now. She could go to bed, and lie still and listen to the wind, or she could sit at her window and look down at the amblers below, the silent drones, carrying meaningless objects from one place to another, following the yellow lines until they were worn out and replaced and wore out again.
The dusty carpet made her cough. Angry, she breathed in, hard, and almost choked. Still, she smelled nothing. She remembered those mushrooms on the grill, how she had to buy one, had to, even though they were twelve seeds each, because the hot sauce looked like blood, and the smoke and the heat made her eyes water but she smelled nothing so she had to taste it, and it was chewy and overcooked but the sauce stung her tongue and that was good. At least she could taste…
…something good. She found the cheque in her pocket. Two thousand seeds for doing nothing. She laughed, and coughed, and sobbed. She half-imagined Lucia standing over her, picking her up by the collar, holding her hand, but that was fantasy. Lucia only moved when the Maestro told her to move, and James was busy with his unsolicited lecture.
Slowly, steadily, the tears dried out, and the goop in her mouth settled down. Sam stood up and patted the dust from her coat. Her hair was a mess but that was alright. She had lost her ledger somewhere but that was alright too. It was only a prop.
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She dumped the letters onto her desk, flipping through them. A red sticker informed her that the delivery from Foundry #17 will arrive tomorrow morning. She stuck it on her board, underneath the tally table, then checked her face in the vanity. A tired girl, older than she expected, smiled back at her. The bags under her eyes looked more permanent than usual, but there were no tears. Her eyes were barely red.
She knocked, and Lucia opened the door.
James was juggling four spools of black tape as he paced the room. He looked up. “Look who’s back, I heard there was – were you crying?”
“No,” said Sam.
He frowned, there and gone. “We have a guest.”
The woman on the couch looked at least a hundred years old. Her hair was fine white silk, her face a mask of wrinkles, her back bent to a hook. She had a cup of tea in one hand and a steel cane in the other. She looked in Sam’s direction with rheumy eyes, and Sam saw Green, everywhere and all at once, bleeding from the air around her, dripping from her gold-threaded sleeves., effervescing out of her shrunken nostrils like whiskers. Her voice was a whisper. “Pretty,” she said.
“Maestro Catherine Pierre of the House of Verdancy,” said James. “My teacher, once upon a time, before I became a delinquent and succeeded on my own.”
“Sit,” the woman said.
Sam sat down and felt tension draining from her body. She closed her eyes for a moment, just a moment, a blink really, and when she opened them again the old woman was gone. James was reading broadsheets on the opposite couch, sipping coffee.
“Good morning,” he said.
The golden light of the Dome Luminous poured through the window, colouring twirls of dust. The clock said six-thirty, which could not be right.
“Charlie’s Box is on its way,” the Maestro continued, almost smiling. “You’ll take care of it?”
“Y-yes, Maestro…was there a…”
“Catherine said you were a hard worker. Worst compliment one can offer someone, I think – usually means they think you are stupid – but coming from Catherine, she doesn’t waste words on those she thinks little of. You made a great first impression.”
“Oh. But…I was sleeping.”
James tossed the broadsheets onto the floor. TERRORISTS ATTACK FINLEY PROPERTY, the headline screamed. “I want the earnings projection updated by the end of the day. Shouldn’t take you too long.” He waved. Lucia sat down next to Sam, her cloak making a whoosh. “Lucia will stay with you for two hours. Get the measurements right.”
“The what?”
“Charlie’s Box.” James put on his cloak and a pair of pristine white gloves. “After you’re done, follow Lucia. We will go meet a uh…friend.”
“Yes Maestro.”
Green glittered in his eyes. “We will debrief at his house, I think. It’ll be fun.”
“Yes Maestro.”
“How much did he give you?”
“The who?”
James rolled his eyes. “The overseer.” He laughed when Sam began fumbling around in her pockets. “Honest to a fault, aren’t you? How much?”
“Two thousand.”
“Aren’t you lucky, apprentice, to be working for one such as I? Enri gets two-fifty. Don’t know why she told me, I think she was trying to brag. Keep it. Buy something nice for yourself.”
“Maestro.”
James looked around, one hand on the door, one eyebrow raised. Lucia turned her head. The room suddenly seemed very small.
“No, I…thank you,” said Sam.
“Thank me?” James laughed. “What part of your job could possibly engender gratitude? Save your formalism for when we are in public. You aren’t working for Jack.”
“Yes Maestro.”