Oliver began his day at a reasonable hour for an Inventor: fourth bell in the afternoon. He rolled from his cot, wrapped himself in his blanket, chugged the dredges of his cold coffee, and shuffled to the furnace.

  Inside, a slim, feathered creature curled amongst the coals. The dry heat tightened the skin across his newly minted burn scars, but the phoenix slept in the heart of the furnace soundly.

  “You’ll be okay,” he encouraged, closing the furnace. For a moment, he contemplated the gauze wraps across the back of his hands. The doctors had warned him that the deepest burns along his forearms were permanent, but the lighter damage to his hands and face would fade over the next few years.

  Branded for the sin of conspiracy with the elemental beast…

  Yet if this was heresy, why was his heart at ease? He could cut the furnace and let the phoenix wither. Indeed, by doctrine, he should kill the creature.

  As if Oliver had the stomach to sentence a sleeping creature to death.

  Fire we worship, and fire we damn. What makes the one so holy and the other profane?

  The Inventor stretched and yawned. He overslept, obviously, but Tura had kept him talking almost to dawn. Nobles treated his ideas with tolerant amusement, and merchants asked after his payment plans. Only Tura treated his weather system as a marvel in its own right!

  Swapping ideas over drinks, the Whistler had even offered to test a few of the towers in his homeland. As the empty glasses piled on the table, they indulged the fanciful and the absurd. This was the dance of Inventors Oliver yearned for – paragons of intellect and progress who burned together for the better future of mankind.

  If only his dreams would resolve with a few drinks on a late night…

Never to be buried dead undying in stone.

Baptized in Truth by a liar

How the Light burned

  No, that was not his dream. Not his voice. Oliver dreamed of careful metal and open skies. With Novia’s rumored super-light metal and the right mix of lifting gases…

  Or was it super-light metal and thrust?

  His ideas rattled around his skull like screws in an empty box.

  Deep inside him, a rebellious whisper grew tired of demon songs. A voice that could not be heard, not yet, but waited for its moment…

  He shuffled around his workshop, checking his equipment and noting the weather conditions.

  That maid had rearranged his notes again while he slept. How could a living woman be so quiet?

  Could she be a Redeemer spy?

  That was the problem with secret societies. Anyone could be an enemy.

  Oliver sighed, checked his appointment book, and reluctantly prepared for the evening.

  An hour later, he slouched in the back of a Livery taxi on his way to the Dreamer’s Den. He wore workman’s pants and suspenders, but nobody in the tenements would mistake him for impoverished. One glance at his hair or hands would be enough to announce him a visitor.

  He wondered if he was truly of use in this mission. One séance was much the same as another, after all. Was he simply playing the spy to alleviate his disappointment with the Inventors?

  Or perhaps finding excuses to spend time with a young woman with the most piercing hazel eyes…

  The tenements were at their busiest just before dinner. Those workers with a short day – only ten hours – prepared their food on the sidewalks, and children raced across the streets. The unemployed lurked in resentful batches on stoops away from the intersections, and not a single constable showed his peaked hat.

  By now, Oliver had a feel for the local topography. The Lufters and the Harkness gangs fought over every block around the Den, but the shop itself rested in an island of tranquility. Visitors to the Den were never molested on their journey to and fro – not even the drunks who stumbled off in the wee hours of the morning with a wad of silver in their pockets.

  He only knew one name strong enough to enforce that sort of discipline on the slums.

  What did you buy when you sold your soul to Reed, Lace?

  Harvest faltered, the wind limp and chill, and the tenements would soon swell as the field hands flooded the city searching for winter work. Frigid, bone-dry, and cram-packed…Solace in the tenements was a hell of cots in every corridor and no solitude to be found.

  The Livery butler slowed the car, waiting on a swarm of children to clear the street of their game. “You watch the streets with a practiced eye, sir. Do you hail from such an environment?”

  “When I first arrived in the city,” Oliver admitted. “It was pretty rough.”

  Best to leave the matter at that.

  “Have you cast your lot for the election, sir?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Given your background, I would expect you to express sympathy with Guildsmaster Reed.”

  “The man’s a bully,” Oliver muttered. A petty king in search of a throne.

  “Oh? The Father Lucas then?” The driver gently accelerated, steering around the makeshift net.

  Oliver shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t like the feel of a priest running things. Shouldn’t they worry about God instead of country?”

  The butler pressed, glancing at his passenger through the rear-view mirror. “That leaves us precious few options. Tura or Alva, then?”

  “Tura at least talks to me like a human being. And he cares about the city. We spent an hour last night just talking about ways to improve things.”

  “Oh? Like what?” probed the butler.

  “Ordinance to stop dumping waste in the harbor for one. The textiles quarter dumps so many suds in the water that the harbor whips up a lather on windy days!”

  “The Weaving Guild would surely oppose such restrictions.”

  “Cause they don’t want to pay the extra silver to deliver their soaps to a dump.”

  “True,” the butler agreed, smiling to himself. He stopped before the Dreamer’s Den and offered, “Have a good night, sir.”

  “You too.”

  Focused on the storefront, Oliver did not notice the butler open a small pad and scratch notes for later. Instead, he nudged open the door and listened a moment. He could not hear any séance in progress – no surprise given the early hour. He cleared his throat and called, “Lace? You about?”

  A few moments later, the Redeemer witch swished through the veil of beads into view. She frowned at him and asked, “Lace?”

  Too late, he realized his error. “Ah. Uh. Well, you witches seem to never actually give names…”

  She smirked. “Oh, I see. Thank you for the name, then. I will treasure this gift from my youngest patron.”

  He was a patron now? That surely meant regular donations.

  She beckoned him beyond the mystic studio. Through the beads, the Dreamer’s Den transformed from opium den to makeshift chapel. Pews filled the converted space, peppered occasionally by the columns that supported the floors above. Scars marked the place where walls had been removed to expand the space, and the original tenement stairwells still offered access to the second and third floors.

  Only a handful of people waited in the pews tonight. A trio of men in pressed white shirts, sharp black slacks, and gleaming snakeskin boots lounged without a care. Across the hall, a noble woman pretended the ruffians were invisible. Near the stairs, the Inventor Alva shared his pew with the stink of whiskey.

  Oliver lingered on the trio of hooligans. Reed’s goons.

  “No service tonight,” Lace trilled. “Tonight is for private sessions. For your needs.”

  Translation: she wants to sell me witch services for cold, hard cash.

  Beneath all the mystery, the Redeemers majored in money.

  Not actually that different from the church, Oliver thought darkly.

  Alva glanced at Oliver, snorted, and swigged his drink.

  The young Inventor hesitated, unsure if he should approach the older man. Alva is an election candidate now. Shouldn’t he avoid this sort of place? Hells, he stinks like the bottom of a keg even from here.

  “I do admire your promptness, but I am afraid you are early,” Lace apologized. “Please, make yourself at home for now.”

  The witch curtsied and withdrew. Leaving Oliver to find a pew, she beckoned the trio of goons to follow her to the western stairs.

  The makeshift chapel fell silent except for the sloshing of an Inventor’s drink.

  Oliver glanced, but Alva avoided his gaze.

  Shrugging, the young man picked up a book from the end of the pew and began to flip through the pages.

Progress is a lie - an opiate for fools. So long as he has gold in his pocket and a job to pass the time, the common man considers this modern world a success. Take these away, and he revolts for the comforts now lost. Yet did our ancestors not stand tall against adversity? Were we not born in fire?

The lure of gold blinds men of wisdom. The strength of ages past is forgotten, and instead of courage man simpers for comfort…

  He flipped a few pages.

The demiurge and his followers treasure lies above all else. Let every perspective be equal! Let the fool alchemist stand shoulder to shoulder with the greatest prophet! These demons seek nothing less than the destruction of Truth for it is the one weapon they cannot corrupt!

  He flipped a lot of pages.

The very words were stolen from our tongue. Ancient runes hint at a language of purity spoken in a time before the demiurge gained control. Even now false gods lurk in the shadows, hungering to snatch the knowledge from our very lips.

When mankind spoke that tongue, there was no starvation and no war. Each man stood as tall as a mountain! We were gods, and we knew paradise.

  Oliver returned the book. Glancing around, he noted the Guild thugs leaving – quick business! – and Alva marching up the stairs. The noble woman continued to ignore the entire chapel like a goddess in her heavens.

  This is a waste of time.

  He could attend the Den twice a week until Spring and accomplish nothing. The angels counseled him to merely observe, but all he learned was the liturgy of cultists and the street price of imps! If he wanted to help, he would have to get his hands dirty.

  Oliver rose, stretched casually, and then marched up the east stairs to see what awaited.

  The second-floor hallway resembled every other tenement hallway he ever knew: a long stretch of grey wood broken by doors with cheap, uneven frames. The smell too brought memories, unpleasant start to finish, and he walked the hall with a scowl of unease.

  In the first room, he found crammed bunks that stretched from corner to corner. Though twenty could fit, only two men slept in the oppressive darkness now.

  Then this is where her little peons sleep.

  He wondered if they paid her for the privilege, or was room and board free for a sworn fanatic?

  Continuing, the next set of doors were locked. He leaned against the wood and listened. Inside, he heard the grinding of small, sharp teeth against bone. Some little creature sniffed at the air and snarled like a noblewoman’s lap dog.

  Imps. He shuddered.

  The final door was locked, but Oliver noted strange smears on the floorboards underneath. The stains could be strong coffee…or old blood.

  There are two sheets on the road: a woman and a fairy.

  He kneeled, examining the lock. If Lace paid for high quality work, he would have to leave the mystery alone …but no, these were Ulyssian steel, a knockoff brand common among the skinflint tenement lords. In fact, most Ulyssian locks were so defective that the right combination of finger pressure against the top of the handle and a little wiggling would…

  The lock popped free.

  A faint rush of shame ran down his back. The farmboy Oliver had never needed to know how to jimmy a lock.

  Then again, farmboys did not return home to a locked door and a landlord’s extortion for even more rent.

  Progress is the right to work dawn to dusk for a moldy cot and the smell of unwashed men.

  He slipped through the door, closing it behind. One step in, he almost slipped on a shred of papyrus. Shreds of paper, vellum, papyrus and sheepskin littered the room like the aftermath of a tornado, and he had to dance between them to the open circle at the center. There waited a journal, outlining a correspondence table between runes and the common script. There were dozens of entries, many crossed out, and frequent, frustrated annotations.

  Oliver recognized that handwriting: formal, precise, and flourished.

  “This is Donovan’s work…” He breezed a finger over the runes. “And this the language from the Archangel’s diary.”

  His neck prickled as though he trespassed in someone’s prized pumpkin patch. Knowledge not meant for his eyes, and the concentration of so many scraps brought a strange heat to the air…

  As though enough of these scraps in one room will spell disaster…

  Some of the writings were freshly printed in ink. Others were so yellowed with age the characters could barely be read. A few stank of deep jungle mildew, and the ones in the corner were etched into sandstone.

  “This is where he learned it,” Oliver muttered, “one stolen fragment at a time.”

  One entire corner of the room held church writings, stacked into towers of scrolls. Of all the writings, these seemed the most likely to make sense to a farmboy, and he stepped over to investigate. To his surprise, the scrolls were neither mad ravings nor liturgical notes. Instead, the scrolls detailed the administration and ordination of the priesthood.

  As he unrolled the third scroll, a silver coin fell out. He snatched it midair and held it to the light. It was a commemorative mint, the kind his grandfather kept, for a Keeper of the Flame several hundred years ago. Its inscription read:

At the center of the flames

Find peace

  “I would not have figured Donovan for a coin collector…” Oliver muttered. A coin this old and in good condition would be worth ten or twenty silver at any of the antique shops, after all.

  He carefully replaced both coin and scroll on the pile. Then he skimmed the other fragments…

  Should I steal something? Alisandra would be able to make sense of this…

  But what would Lace miss from this mess? Was it all Donovan’s work, or was she keenly attuned?

  No, I don’t know enough. If I ruin my welcome here, then I stop being of use to her.

  Oliver retreated, locking the door behind him, and descended the east stairs with feigned nonchalance. His act proved unnecessary; the hall was empty now.

  The youth waited, fingers twitching like a jazz musician.

  Lace descended the western stairs, escorting the noble woman with smiles and reassurances. That veneer faded the moment the noble disappeared through the beads, though, and the Redeemer stared after her prey like a snake.

  Quick as a spark, she reasserted her pleasant expression and twirled to greet Oliver again. “Now, shall we step into my office?”

  “Your office?” he asked in surprise, glancing at the western stairs.

  “Of course. What did you think was upstairs?”

  Elemental beasts in chains, the scribblings of a mad man, or a boudoir? I hadn’t decided.

  He cleared his throat, keeping that comment to himself.

  “No nerves now, dear. I am your humble servant.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  She snatched his hand and tugged him up the stairs. More mysteries waited behind locked doors, but her receiving room was at the end of the hall. Though threadbare in comparison to House Visage, it still boasted two plush chairs, ready tea, and bookshelves stuffed with high literature.

  Oliver even recognized a few of them now. “Liturgy? Really?”

  “Do you think me impious?” Lace replied loftily, reclining in a sea of skirts.

  “Is that a heretical pun?”

  The Redeemer tittered politely. “If you wish it.”

  Mirielle’s lullaby pulsed in the back of his head. Come now, little Inventor. Keep your wits about you. You can hardly fall to such a peon. You have greater works ahead…

  “Do you desire knowledge?” Lace purred. “Shall I unveil secrets before you?”

  “Are you offering imps?”

  “Whatever tools you require.” She nodded towards his arms. “Or perhaps healing?”

  He considered. If he asked for no services, then he was an anomaly. She would wonder – rightfully – why he came at all. Yet he could hardly ask for her trust and access to her ledgers…

  Tell her what she wants to hear. You have somewhere else to be…

  Come to think of it, there was one safe course of action.

  He knew of a target quite capable of defending herself.

  “I want you to spy on Mirielle Visage.”

  That caught Lace by surprise, at least. “Lady Visage? Your sponsor? Oh, you know I was joking before, dear.”

  He was familiar enough with that gambit. It was only a joke if the other person didn’t like what they heard. “Yes. Her.”

  The Redeemer fought a small, evil smile. “Why, Oliver, you impugn a noble Lady…”

  “I’ve met enough noble Ladies now to see how cheap the title is,” he admitted darkly.

  Lace bared her fangs. “Oh, yes…crass little monarchs on castles of sand…”

  “How much will this cost?”

  Lace leaned forward, hand on her cheek, and regarded Oliver with renewed curiosity. “I may be able to offer you a discount.”

***

  At midnight, Lace reclined behind her desk and counted her donations. Ten crisp gold notes waited in the tray, signal of noble favor. There had been a time in the witch’s life when Lace would have happily slit a throat for that tray.

  Now she let the peons slit the throats, and she counted the notes.

  “Donovan set me up right,” she hummed, tucking the notes into her safe box. “A pity he left so soon…”

  Ah, but he was a foreigner. Of course he would flee for his home at the first sign of trouble.

  It was such a pity that some mysterious malefactor had sent missives to the Plateau, Wave’s Lament, and Deepbloom with all of that highly detailed information on the membership and activities of the southern Redeemers.

  They would not have survived long with the Stormmother returned. Our mysterious informant merely hastened the inevitable.

  There was plenty of fun in Lumia, though. Every idiotic noble scrabbled for meaning in the swirl of opium and the tricks of witchcraft, and Lace could sate that desire with her dark skirts and sweetened words.

  Dissatisfied with Aure? Jealous of the Stormmother and her children? One gold more, dear sir, one gold more will buy enlightenment. All those deeper mysteries require nothing more than a trifling donation!

Stolen story; please report.

  In a way, her pet Redeemers and the nobles were quite similar. They strained together for even the faintest whisper from God.

  Please, she scoffed. As if there was a god to hear. Any fool could walk the tenement streets and see the proof of absence in sunken faces and maimed bodies. Little boys missing a hand from a conveyer belt and women who coughed like miners from the burning fumes of factory soaps.

  Lace’s free hand idly stroked up and down her high collar. Soft silk wrapped tight like a noose.

  She found the pressure helped.

  Staring at the safe box, she toyed with the idea of burning it. Four hundred gold, a fortune fit for a House, reduced to ash in a few moments.

  Tempting…but petulant. Lace knew better uses for fire.

  Rent must be paid and Inquisitors bribed. The coals burn quietly, awaiting their moment…

  She separated the money into neat stacks in her safe box, nestled beside an odd, black scale. The scale laid dormant, a fist-sized shard of darkness, but its image occasionally squirmed in the corner of the witch’s vision…

  When she held it in her hands, she heard the cold wind howling like a promise. She felt the surety of a justice that was destined to be. Something in that shard bade its time, patient as the viper…

  Her stomach rumbled, reminding her of a lunch and dinner skipped, but she ignored its whining. Hunger was an old friend – hunger and the desperate acts which followed. She knew the taste of starvation in the shadows of a chateau.

  She would eat when she was ready and not a moment before. That power, at least, her gold bought.

  Lace shifted in her chair, turning to her reports. Her juniors managed the imps that skulked thick as flies through the underbelly of Lumia, translated the scrambled impressions from the little monsters into reports, and tracked the various busy work of a proper criminal organization.

  Truthfully, she missed the imps. Though they were a furtive and weak species, the imps worked for honest food, no more or less, and would just as soon eat their handlers as an old bone.

  Respectably honest little monsters.

  Still, Lace had wormed to the top of this little pile, and where did all the time go? Every organization needed foot soldiers. Otherwise, who would she throw to the constables when they began to hunger for another sacrifice of witches for the papers?

  Redeemers…witches…clients…

  Lace kept plenty of kindling on hand, just in case.

  Humming, Lace considered the matter of Oliver Oshton, Inventor candidate. His official documentation was dull: a farmboy come east to seek his fortune. His former teacher left a glowing note on his aptitude for academics, but such high praise meant nothing when the boy would never be able to gain entry at the great colleges. No amount of new money would buy entry into those rarified halls.

  His unofficial documentation was not much better. He was kept on too tight a leash.

  “How did such a good boy come to be an Inventor?” Lace wondered, tapping the pages.

  Her fingertips fell on Mirielle Visage’s smirking picture.

  “She does have good fortune with Inventors, doesn’t she?” The witch snorted. “I must wonder who truly creates the Inventions she hands to her dogs…”

  The high priestess of the Redeemers jotted a quick note to redouble efforts to penetrate House Visage.

  Lace flipped to the next report. Three imps dispatched to House Mishkan; three imps returned dazed and delirious. The creatures would only relay impressions of great, glowing white eyes that burned like an open firepit and becoming lost in the hedges.

  “I will have to refund Edmond’s money,” she huffed.

  Another note: find out who runs witchcraft for House Mishkan. See if Donovan paid them off.

  House Visage: new, rich, and powerful. Churned out Inventors with clockwork regularity.

  House Mishkan: ancient, storied, broke. Impervious to all her inquiries.

  The first among Houses would stumble soon, and her brethren would tear her to shreds in a gleeful frenzy of cannibalism.

  Nobles are no kinder to their own kin…

  Lace shuffled through the papers, spotting a factoid: House Mishkan just pledged to Father Lucas.

  How troublesome for my patron, she thought drolly.

  Unlike so many of her guests, Guildsmaster Reed cared nothing for God and eternity. No demiurges troubled his sleep. The small-minded gangster would demand much of her pets in the coming nights, and she would provide.

  After all, he had an election to win.

  Lace was but one of many tools in his quiver to that end. She would be cheaply bought: money and a singular favor. When Reed assumed the position of city manager in spring, he would appoint her Keeper of the Flame.

  No one cared that the position had devolved into a sinecure. Its appointment had passed from the church in Mel to the city manager of Lumia as part of backroom bargaining years ago, just another chip in the pile. After all, the Keeper could preside over seasonal festivities from the Cathedral as easily as the Conclave. The Keeper was not involved in the real work of the church, anyways; he neither sat on councils nor broke ties in assembly.

  No one cares but me, at least.

  In this country, the church dabbled in politics, tantalized by the rewards of a finger upon the scales of power…

  Perhaps the priesthood should have predicted that politics would dabble in return.

  Lace leaned back, thumbed through the reports, and fantasized of roaring flames.

***

  Far too early, Oliver turned out to the Cathedral plaza. He shuffled, yawning, onto a platform set aside for the Inventors, and he sank onto a hard chair beside Tura.

  “Brisk weather this morning!” Tura practically sang, upright and alert.

  “Yeah,” Oliver grunted, sinking into his jacket.

  The common folk flooded the plaza, awaiting the pageantry to follow. In the weeks since the Conclave vote, several dozen election candidates declared their intentions, but the fine print on the approval was not quite so generous. Only the top four candidates would be allowed to place their names on the ballots.

  “Quite a coincidence that we have exactly four candidates with the wealth and connections to claim the spotlight,” Oliver muttered.

  “There are many coincidences in life,” Tura chuckled.

  “How much did this one cost?”

  “A pretty nice boat.”

  “Since when do Whistlers sail?!”

  “Given that I am down a boat, never.” Tura clapped the young Inventor on the shoulder and leaned in conspiratorially. “Truthfully, you Lumians are a gaggle of idiots. If you knew how to bargain, you would have demanded my horse!”

  Surprised, Oliver laughed. “Okay, then, how much for your horse?”

  As the youth took his bait, the Whistler grinned. “In my culture, dear friend, a gift of horses is the usual dowry. Alas, while you are a spry fellow, I confess that my wife would probably kill you.”

  “You’re married?!”

  “Of course! If I should win election, I will be able to sign her immigration papers myself!”

  A priest mounted the steps of the Cathedral and bellowed for the election candidates to approach for the selection process.

  “Ah, that’s my que. Off to the show.” Tura dipped his head and slipped away.

  “Good luck!” Oliver called after. “…not that there’s any doubt to the outcome…”

  All of the candidates lined before the priesthood on the steps, and the pageant of selection played exactly as anyone would have guessed. The deputy assistant to the former city mayor with twenty-five years of experience and the city treasurer with thirty years of practice were both passed over without a peep, and the four official election candidates received their blessing from the doddering, old Keeper.

  All four had speeches conveniently prepared.

  Guildsmaster Reed shouldered his way to the podium and spoke first. He lectured the assembled crowd at length about the plight of the common man. He guaranteed prevailing wages for every Guildsman, justice for every man slighted by a nobleman, and fresh construction to alleviate the terrible issues in the tenements. A vote for Reed was a vote for direct and personal prosperity!

  He surrendered the podium with a gracious wave of his hands – like a king surrendering the stage to his jester.

  Braggart.

  Next, Father Lucas offered a heartfelt prayer. Through faith, they would cultivate the city of Lumia like a fabled garden. The way would be long, and hard choices would be made, but they would arrive together.

  If I have to sit through another prayer before lunch, I may die.

  Tura took the steps third, and he outlined an ambitious plan for urban renewal that would pave every road into Lumia and expand the harbor’s shipping capacity threefold. Unfortunately, he spent most of the speech on the particulars of construction contracts, and few people applauded.

  Tura…I know you’re enthusiastic…but please try to consider our feelings. There’s a chill today!

  Finally, the Inventor Alva offered an electric bribe: power to every home, state of the air temperature controls for every factory, and cars sold at such a scandalously low price that a yeoman could drive himself to work!

  At least he managed the speech without a whiskey slur…

  The crowd shouted and jeered the entire time, more carnival than ceremony. When the last speech faded, the lunch carts eagerly attended to the crowds, and entrepreneurial teenagers sold iced water at triple price.

  Oliver hopped from the Inventor’s bleachers and wove through the press. With a bit of careful footwork, he reached the edge of the crowd ahead of the swell, and he searched about for a wagon. Instead, he noticed the paper boys handing out free, fresh printings of the morning rags. Shrugging, the young Inventor snagged one.

  Financed by a generous, anonymous donation, the headline article proclaimed:

Tura against industry!

Even as the Inventor of photography claims to hold the cherished future of our great city in his highest regards, he conspires to choke the lifeblood of industry! Sources close to the Inventor have confided that his urban renewal plan will lead to thousands of jobs lost to choking new regulations! The Weaver’s Guild in particular faces a bleak future as Tura’s new disposal regulations threaten to drive them from the city.

Other sources say that the city of Wave’s Lament, freshly buoyed by the appearance of their latest ‘goddess’ – known by the church of Aure to be a pretender witch, much as her predecessor! – has offered to host the Weaver’s Guild, raising the specter that wholesome Lumian jobs might be forced to move to the tropics just to feed their children!

The Inventor Tura was not available for comment before this printing.

Guildsmaster Reed, a close friend of the Weaver’s Guild, had this to say on the record. “Terrible what he proposes. What’s wrong with soap in water? We bathe in soap and water! The harbor is so massive, a few spilled pints of soap won’t do more than amuse school children with puffs on the whitecaps. I respect Tura as an opponent, but this plan of his will kill our fair industry for nothing more than his misplaced sense of environmentalism. My plan, on the other hand…”

  Oliver crumpled the paper and hurled it to the ground. “What a crock of–”

  Naturally, Sebastian watched him from the roadside, leaning nonchalant against the bumper of the House Mishkan car.

  “How long have you been there?” the Inventor snapped, stomping the paper into the sidewalk.

  “Only just arrived, good sir.”

  “Oh, you’re always just arrived!”

  “A skill carefully cultivated over millennia, I assure you.”

  Oliver cast his eyes across the crowd. Half of Lumia swarmed the square, and the roads would soon clog beyond repair.

  I need to fix this!

  He spun on the angel. “I need to talk to Alisandra!”

  Sebastian arched an eyebrow.

  “I mean, Lady Mishkan…”

  “If your need is so dire…” the angel hummed, amused.

  “It is!” She lives her life in the papers. She’ll know how to force them to print a retraction!

  “Then let us be away.”

  The servant saw him to the car, and they drove in silence from the crowded Cathedral to the noble hill. Past the outrageous mansions and their swarms of groundkeepers, they arrived at House Mishkan – quiet and dark at the end of the lane.

  “Alisandra is in the kitchen,” Sebastian announced, parking in the dim garage.

  “Great.” Oliver slipped from the car and marched through the creepy hallways – crowded with ancient suits of armor and heraldry – into the kitchen.

  The Lady Mishkan glanced up from her book in surprise. “Oliver?”

  She wore riding clothes, the perfect equestrian with her hair in a bun and form-hugging leather pants tucked into her boots.

  “Sorry to intrude,” he grunted. “Have you read the paper?”

  She gestured to the pile, unread, to her left. Instead, the Lady Mishkan read from a tome of bound vellum, probably ten thousand years old, written in the impenetrable script of a dead language.

  “Ah, the correspondence of dreams,” Sebastian noted from the doorway.

  Alisandra slammed the tome shut with a cool glance at the angel of witness.

  “Something interesting in your nights?” he asked innocently.

  She directed her attention to Oliver. “What tripe are they running now?”

  In response, he laid out the front page and jabbed a finger at the offending text. “Where did they get this?!”

  “Sources close to the Inventor,” Alisandra deadpanned.

  Oliver froze, dreadful realization finally sinking in. “Ah, icy hells! That conniving butler who drove me to the Den!”

  “It seems our young Inventor is not aware,” Sebastian noted dryly.

  Alisandra spared Oliver a pitying glance, cleared her throat, and asked, “Aren’t you forgetting some landscaping, Sebastian?”

  “Of course not. My memory is strong as an elephant.”

  She glared at him.

  What’s an elephant? Oliver wondered.

  “If you desire to speak with Oliver alone, perhaps this goal would be better accomplished by asking,” the angel of witness counseled. Nevertheless, he sketched a bow to his Lady and departed.

  Alisandra waited a moment, a hand on her tome. Mostly to herself, she muttered, “They’re my dreams, you prying lout. Go sniff out some more imps.”

  Oliver politely waited.

  “My apologies.” She sat up straighter. “So this butler…Livery?”

  “Yes! Except no, he’s a spy! He’s the only one who could possibly have sold my words to the papers. I ought to drag him into an alley and show him tenement justice!” He flushed at his own false bravado; his stomach clenched at the thought of ambushing a man in the dark. Yet it was easy to pretend to courage in front of a Lady. “You know, he must have stolen that uniform!”

  “Do you know what they do when they catch someone impersonating a Livery Guildsman? Unless he fancied a long walk off a short pier, he was Livery.”

  “Which means the Livery Guild is harboring spies!” he objected.

  The angel spared him a look usually reserved for especially slow children. “Well, yes. Have you ever wondered why no servant wanders the Conclave floor? Tell me this, Oliver. If you wished to eavesdrop on your rivals, how would you go about it? Would it not be easiest to simply integrate yourself as an indispensable cog in their operations?”

  “What sane House would invite in spies?!”

  “Someone has to run daily affairs. Hundreds of children across sub-branches of the family, dozens of holdings and estates, and business interests spread across the whole of the known world. Tutors. Accountants. Couriers. Radio operators. Radio cryptographers. Publicists. Shall I go on?”

  “I get the point,” he muttered.

  “I suspect that the Livery Guild began with pure enough intentions, but the temptation to dabble in darker work was too strong. Writings early into the interregnum refer to butlers sentenced to hanging for their loose tongues, but such punishments quietly dwindled over the decades. By the time we realized what the Livery Guild was becoming, it already had attained critical mass. They do not forbid us from hiring outside the organization; they merely make sure that the alternatives cannot match their quality or cost...and of course, you cannot use any Livery service unless you accept their terms on all service.”

  Oliver reeled. What sort of childhood is it, raised by tutors who rat out your grades? Your every stupid remark flown at eagle speed to the ears of your enemies?

  “Of course, everyone hates them,” the noble continued, smirking to herself. “But if not Livery, then whom? Never mind the inconvenience of the bumbling neonate spy who leaves your suitcase in disarray. Livery spies at least put things back where they found them.”

  Her every mistake is broadcast, but she must hide what she can be…

  Oliver cursed himself for a sap, but he saw Alisandra with fresh eyes regardless. “You have to harbor spies to learn from spies. No spies, no intelligence. No warning what is coming. Its extortion!”

  “It is collective action,” the Lady Mishkan corrected primly. “If collective action is extortion, then what is democracy? Is it better to harbor the known spy or to await the hidden one? Even if we could extinguish the Livery Guild, would the new servants not eventually discover the same perverse incentives?”

  Oliver placed his head on the marble countertop in despair.

  “A House that maintains a large Livery cadre without leaks thus demonstrates their deep coffers. A House without Livery servants is too poor to properly bribe the help…which leads the other Houses to press advantage, harass staff, pressure investors…”

  “How can you live like that?” Oliver asked.

  “The piles of money help.”

  “You’re supposed to be an angel, you know!”

  “I am more Lady than angel, I’m afraid,” Alisandra remarked, a current of annoyance seething beneath her placid smile.

  “Then I would beg the Lady Mishkan to help me right the record against this slander!”

  “Libel,” she corrected.

  “Whichever!”

  Leaning forward, the Lady Mishkan clasped her hands. “You spoke the words in this report, did you not?”

  “Well…yes…”

  “And the Livery Guild sold it to papers owned heart and soul by Guildsmaster Reed, yes?”

  Oliver squirmed.

  “There is no fighting libel in the courts. Even if you won – three years from now – they would merely print a retraction on the last page underneath the advertisements for foot sponges. If you wish to defeat libel, you must speak to the woman who controls as many radio stations as Reed does papers.”

  “Mirielle Visage…”

  A music in his mind, gently reminding him that he wasted his time. What does it matter what they think? It is only more fuel for your pyre, my beautiful martyr.

  “What really brings you, Oliver?” she asked. “You know that House Visage is a titan, easily capable of countering Reed’s influence.”

  “I do not enjoy her presence,” he admitted, examining the tabletop. Marble, of course, beautifully speckled and carefully polished. His eyes followed the pattern of spots straight to where the Lady Mishkan rested her hands.

  She kept her nails clipped close like a man, but there was no dirt beneath.

  “Interesting,” Alisandra noted. “You find no rapture in the touch of the woman who spins dreams like cotton candy?”

  His foreign lullaby quickened like his heart, a warning for where he might choose to stray…

  Oliver nodded.

  The Lady Mishkan regarded him with fresh interest.

  A droll conversation, urged his lullaby. What is a martyr without the fire? Remember what you were loaned for…

  “Ah, I haven’t told you about yesterday’s meeting.” Straightening, Oliver quickly related the events of his meeting with Lace from the night before.

  Sebastian returned mid-tale, his fine pants covered in loam and a spade in his hands.

  “…and so Lace preaches the end of Ruhum while hoarding fragments of your dead language.”

  “Ah, the old-fashioned desire to immanentize the eschaton,” Sebastian mused, setting the spade in the sink. “The glory of purgative fire will wash away this fallen age and usher in a utopia. Having lived through several such purges, I must say the holy lands seem no closer.”

  For a moment, the angel of witness fell silent, staring into the sky. At a distant star only he could spot.

  “Sebastian?” Alisandra asked. “Are you alright?”

  Her servant jolted back to earth. “My apologies. Despite my best efforts, I fear the tulips will not survive the winter.”

  “I am afraid I will have to report this to my father,” Alisandra pronounced.

  “I fling myself on your mercy,” Sebastian agreed. Dusting his hands, he spun on a heel and vanished again.

  “…Does he even care about the Redeemers?” Oliver muttered.

  “Sebastian and my father prefer to maintain a…balanced view…on world events,” the Lady Mishkan said.

  “No, then.”

  Alisandra shrugged, reclined on her stool, and stretched her hands above her head. The motion revealed the contours of her biceps, the curve of her waist, and the swell of her breast.

  Oliver caught himself staring.

  “I should see to my training,” she sighed. “If Lace attempts another insult, I would be ready for her. Do you require a ride somewhere?”

  “What does an angel train?” he asked, ignoring her question. He had plenty of work for his Inventions to fill the day – and an apology to deliver to Tura! – but he found himself dawdling in this pretty young woman’s presence.

  “Anything and everything,” she teased. “Today, however, will be aerial combat drills.”

  “Aerial…”

  Alisandra rapped a knuckle against her fine boots. “My Blooming gift. An artifact of divine magic.”

  “How in the worlds do boots fly?” he demanded.

  “It is the nature of shoes to trod. The nature of swords to cut. Does the platonic ideal of a ship truly care if it sails upon waters or the air?”

  He nodded, though that explanation illuminated nothing. Nevertheless, he quickly spun an excuse. “Well, maybe I should help? I mean, maybe Lace has some crazy artifacts of her own. I should train too, right?”

  “Looking for self-defense tips?”

  From a beautiful Lady? “Sure!”

  Alisandra slid from the stool, hand on her hip, and grinned. “If you wish to become a wolf, young pup, then you need something to sink your teeth into.”

  She motioned him along. They walked to the garden, and she opened the gardener’s shed to reveal landscaping tools, a copy of Gardener’s Delight, and several dozen wooden training swords in a basket. She grabbed the first, stepped back, and drove its tip into the loam with no apparent effort.

  “One moment.”

  She returned to the house, leaving him alone.

  Oliver gently poked the wooden sword, buried deep.

  “Huh.”

  He grasped the hilt and tugged, but the blade remained steadfast. Then he gripped with both hands and yanked.

  In response, the hilt wiggled stubbornly.

  She returned, carrying a basket full of cricket balls, and Oliver quickly snatched his hands away. She brushed past and yanked the training sword free, a clod of dirt still speared on the tip.

  Now that he looked, he noticed dozens of other holes, wads of churned loam, and dents in the grass…

  “Sebastian is your groundskeeper?” he asked, clearing his throat.

  “He does not require sleep.”

  More a curse than a blessing to never sleep…

  Alisandra kicked a heel against the dirt, warming her legs.

  Oliver’s eyes drifted across the boots and then a little higher…

  “Will your burns give you any trouble?” she asked, jabbing her sword at the exposed skin on the back of his   hands.

  “They’re basically healed.”

  He would have told her what happened, but she did not ask. Instead, the noble girl flicked the loam off the sword.

  “How long have you practiced like this?” he asked.

  “Since the day I Bloomed.”

  “Bloomed?”

  “The day I awoke an angel.”

  The young man stuttered on that thought. The day…she awoke…Angels are born human?!

  Alisandra exhaled sharply, assumed a martial stance, and leaped into the air. The runes at the base of her boots flashed a blue as pure as the noontime sky, and she hit the air like a dance floor, heels clicking. She spun, slashed, and leaped again. Rolling, she landed sideways on the air, parried, feinted three sideways steps, and bounced completely upside down.

  He stared. What else could he do? She danced on the very air!

  “Toss a few cricket balls!” she commanded, increasing her tempo. Jump, pivot midair, slash and dodge.

  “R-right!” He snatched up a half dozen and threw them skyward, one at a time.

  The angel waited until three reached the apex of their arc, poised like a cat. Then she dashed forward. Three strokes for three balls, each met with a sharp crack of exploding leather. Her sword blurred, and her boots left an after image of blue flashes from each sharp step.

  He threw the next dozen balls, and each met the same grisly fate under her blade.

  Alisandra dropped to the ground and popped her neck. “There is no need to pause between volleys, pup.”

  His blood quickened in irritation. I’ll show you a pup, puffed up noble girl!

  He positioned a dozen more cricket balls across the back of the nearby bench in a line.

  Alisandra smirked. She paced backwards to the far edge of the clearing, an ancient oak tree to her right.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you! I was the best pitcher in my town!” he bragged, a liar through and through.

  Then he pitched at top speed, tearing open a few of his burn scabs in the process.

  She flipped upside down, sword outstretched, and dashed forward to meet the volley. Ten cricket balls evaporated before her blade.

  The eleventh clocked her dead in the teeth.

  Swearing, she staggered. Her footing veered wildly, and her twelfth swing flew wide. Instead of the last ball, her sword collided with the oak tree. Shards of bark flew in every direction, and the sword evaporated into splinters.

  Alisandra toppled to the ground, face hidden by her hair.

  “Aure above!” Oliver snarled, rushing to her side. Please, God, don’t tell me I knocked out a tooth!

  She blew hair from her face and straightened on her heels, revealing a busted lip. “My apologies.”

  “Your apologies? I hit you in the face!”

  She wiped the blood from her lip. For a moment, she regarded the stain on her skin with faint bemusement. “Do not fear, Oliver. I am surprisingly durable these days…”

  “Your sword exploded.”

  Alisandra regained her feet. “Yes. Sebastian will lecture me. ‘The blade must be an extension of your very being’.”

  A cricket ball to the teeth barely phased her…

  “And the boots? You were sliding sideways…”

  “Indeed.” A sly smile suddenly blossomed on her face. “You pitched like a demon. Like you meant to brain me.”

  “Sorry!”

  A coy dare lurked in her eyes, hot enough to spark a war. “Would you like to try my boots?”

  He blinked, alarmed and enticed in equal measure. “Are they cursed?”

  “No more than usual.” She sat on the bench and pulled them off. “Here.”

  Oliver accepted her boots with a pounding heart. They were high quality, custom tailed leather, supple with regular use and care. A rune had been engraved into the sole of each, its shape reminiscent of a crescent moon.

  “Do they feel heavy?” she asked, peering like a curious student.

  “No. Why?” he asked, loosening the laces. He crammed his feet in, winced at the claustrophobic fit, and stood.

  They feel cramped, small, and decidedly normal…

  “You wear forged Light, Oliver Oshton, heaven drawn down beneath a thin veneer of leather. A pattern inscribed in the sky and mirrored against your soles.”

  Like a switch flicked in his brain, he suddenly realized the boots weighed as much as a full load of rebar. He wheezed in surprise, lifting his feet only with a heaving grunt.

  Alisandra chuckled. “Good. Not just me, then.”

  “What?” he grunted, heaving forward with clunking steps.

  “Curious, though…I suppose the weight must adjust itself to what you can bear…” She tapped at her split lip in thought. “Now envision the ground not as the dirt beneath your feet but as a concept. Carry the earth in your heart with every step.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and imagined.

  “Now step up an inch and catch the ground.”

  A subtle music played in his head. Didn’t it always? But this music found a dance partner in the sudden tickling power against his feet.

  He thought of the sky.

  Oliver took one step and careened, screaming, into the clouds.

***

  Alisandra had no expectation that the Inventor boy would manage her boots. They were an instrument of Will, a capacity rarely honed. She had struggled to do more than hover an inch above the ground for the first month of her training, after all!

  Yet Alisandra forgot to account for all the variables.

  She heard a sudden, sharp note of familiar music, and the wolf pup shot sky high.

  “Hells!” she swore, staring after him. “Sebastian!”

  Several seconds later, the angel of witness opened his window. “What is the matter, Alisan—“

  He frowned and glanced skyward.

  “Oliver caught the boots!”

  “So he did,” Sebastian muttered.

  “How do we get him down before he floats into space?!”

  “Deeply unlikely he would rise so high. His schoolhouse pedagogy would hold the firmaments to be a form of aether.”

  “Sebastian! He could die!”

  And she was the fool who dared a pup to fly…

  Unperturbed, the angel of witness laughed to himself. “Ah, of course. Timing fit for a king.”

  Alisandra heard the beating of white wings, and her heart unclenched.

  Archangel Gabriel, angel of protection, descended to the garden. One outstretched arm maintained the great power of his aspect: a sphere of woven Light encircling the Inventor boy.

  Oliver jammed his arms against the smooth walls of the bubble, scrabbling for purchase. He beat his heels against the Light, and each impact released a panicked flash of blue light. Thankfully, the meager power of a woven artifact was no match for the Archangel.

  “I found something of yours,” Gabriel teased, guiding the bubble to the dirt. He knelt, selecting two pebbles from the dirt, and turned to Oliver. Then he peeled away the shields just as Oliver kicked; the youth’s feet jerked into open air; the Archangel jammed the pebbles into the center of the boots’ glowing runes.

  A pattern disrupted; an ideal lost. Oliver toppled to the ground, panting.

  “Thank you!” Alisandra breathed, kneeling beside the young man. “You’re on the ground, Oliver. Be at ease!”

  Teeth rattling, Oliver flopped onto his back.

  “Welcome back,” Sebastian called to the Archangel. “Your help is appreciated, as always. It would have been quite a pain to chase him down.”

  “What sort of angel of protection ignores the cry of need?” Gabriel replied.

  Alisandra realized, belatedly, that she was sweating. Not from her workout, of course, but from the thought of sending a mortal boy to asphyxiate in the upper atmosphere…

  “What should I label this one in the ledger?” Sebastian asked.

  Gabriel thought. “Assisted altitude control.”

  The two old geezers chuckled together.

  Alisandra pried her boots from Oliver’s feet. He did not respond to her manhandling, and she cursed under her breath. “Will he be alright?”

  “From the bubble? Certainly. Why, when you were a toddler, you’d ask your father to put you in the bubble and roll around the mansion like a madcap hamster!”

  “He could have died, Sebastian! Have you no decency?!”

  The angel of witness tilted his head. “He could have died crossing the street this morning as well.” His expression grew distant and clouded. “A drunk noble stumbling still inebriated to his car in the dawn light. Driving like a snake chased by a hawk. One sharp swerve at the wrong moment, cresting the sidewalk, and the end of Oliver. The noble would not have been charged.”

  Gabriel laid a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Sorry, Ali. Perhaps we indulge in a touch of ill-timed black humor, but is it not better to laugh? A man who can laugh is still alive.”

  Alisandra sighed, smothered her frustrations, and raised a hand in forgiveness. Then she jostled Oliver gently. “Breathe. How did you manage the magic so easily?”

  “I heard the music,” he replied thinly. “A song like hers.”

  This time, all three angels heard the faint music…

  Gabriel nodded to himself. “A door propped ajar tends to swing open, after all. Very well, young man. Consider today your first lesson in the highest arts.” He raised a finger like a professor. “In the land of the divine, state of mind is everything.”

  “What about the state of my bladder?” Oliver muttered, though his pants were still dry.

  The Archangel grinned. “That’s the spirit! I see why Ali likes you.”

  Alisandra backed away with the boots so that Oliver might breathe and practiced killing her father with her eyes. Privately, she thought, Though perhaps he came alarmingly close to all the space a man could ever ask for…

  Tucking his wings, the Archangel nudged Alisandra. “I would speak to you and Sebastian.”

  “What’s wrong now?” she asked.

  “Lynne has set herself on a difficult path, and I would help her maintain focus. I intend to head south and encourage her.”

  “Ah,” she said, carefully neutral. If she wondered what her nursemaid sought in reclaimed glory, she would not voice that opinion in front of her father.

  “Let us discuss the matter over tea,” the Archangel suggested. He offered Oliver a pat on the knee. “Take heart, young man. The view from the heavens is worth the terror, is it not?”

  Gabriel steered his daughter towards the house.

  Oliver laid a moment, head swimming. It was tempting to remain in the dirt – possibly forever.

  After a moment, he hissed through his teeth, “Come on, boy.”

  “Keep up!”