…and for those of you who have forgotten that the Inventors campaign, you are not alone. The titans of technology are so quiet that one wonders if they have been struck mute! The mighty Tura is so desperate that he shows his Inventions at county fairs. He plays his movies on barns! Perhaps he will be able to find employment in the circus.

Mark my words. This is a contest between two forces: The church and the Guilds.

  Late in the night, Lace wavered in her mission. As the weather turned to bleak Solace, so too did her thoughts retreat into darker places. Her nails glazed up and down her collar, the mask of tight silk that covered her wickedness.

  Cold nights, an empty belly, and no pity to be found in the vaunted city of light.

  A fairy hummed above her desk, bored with the confines of Reed’s mansion and its cheap gilt.

  “Soon, my pet, soon,” she reassured, flicking another candy to the gleaming creature. “First you must surrender yourself to me.”

  Cragbears and serpents grew their entire lives. Any fool could tell when one was old and powerful.

  A sylph, on the other hand, remained petite and gleaming.

  Let Reed think this one a budding creature, not yet ready for his needs. The damned Guildsmaster had consigned the rest of her stock to the fires for his little plots. He did not care for breeding cycles or smuggling schedules. Only results.

  For the tenth time, she considered arranging an accident for her employer. Unfortunately, the most likely victor in the election with Reed dead would be Father Lucas, and that self-righteous priest would never surrender the Keeper of the Flame to a witch.

  “The righteous are always trouble,” she told the fairy. “A luxury of the indolent rich, firm in the principles they’ve never starved for.”

  Her spies had found enough blackmail on the other three candidates to fill a folio, but Lucas was happily married, quite pious, and publicly admired.

  “Perhaps Reed is not the one who requires an accident…”

  On the other hand, she could simply flee. Empty the Redeemer accounts and retire to Wave’s Lament in comfort.

  I could live like the nobles, flush on my stolen money.

  Her nails bit into her collar, though she could not feel the pressure. The scar tissue felt nothing at all.

  Or I can teach them how their holy fire hungers.

  A servant knocked at the door, and Lace jerked her hand to her lap.

  “Come in!” she snapped, annoyed at herself.

  One of the older acolytes entered with a bow and offered a set of reports for her approval. She had brought a half dozen of the most pious with her to the mansion; they were convenient as both errand boys and fodder.

  The report brought good news, at least. Matters proceeded as planned in the underworld. The old order of witches had laid in bed with the nobility too long, grown weak, and now faced extinct under a fresh Inquisition. They would break.

  Lace became the only game in town. Reed’s only choice – just in case he developed a wandering eye.

  Flipping to the last page, she paused and read twice.

  “You are sure this is correct?” she demanded.

  “Yes,” the acolyte replied confidently, meeting her gaze.

  “And you are sure that it was Father Lucas who did this?” She held that gaze with cool indifference.

  “Yes.”

  “Such a wonderfully compassionate man…” she drawled. Finally, a crack in his shining armor! Tucking away the paper, she ordered, “You are dismissed.”

  He tarried, crossing his arms. “Ma’am…” His honorific anything but. “When will Donovan return?”

  Alarm bells rang through her head. “When the threat in the south is defeated,” she offered smoothly.

  “The Stormmother openly reigns in Wave’s Lament.”

  Lace let her left hand slip into her skirts. “We must be patient and cunning, my son.”

  He grimaced.

  “The Spring wind will break open the trade routes again. Then we will send our best acolytes to join him,” she promised, fingers wrapping around a little trinket.

  A scale, cold and dark as the hells in her fingertips, that squirmed at her touch.

  It never left her side now.

  “There has no been no word from the south for months now. No missives, nothing!”

  “You must have faith,” she reassured, shifting the scale into her lap.

  He cut her off with a sharp wave. “Faith my arse! You can sit in Donovan’s chair and mime his faith, but you’re nothing but a–”

  She brandished the scale, and she let it sing.

A darkness like light

Hunger beyond the horizon

The abyss bids you dance

  A horrible, wonderful song that caught the man midstride. His hands sank to his side, his gaze fell into the scale, and his lips began to drool.

  While he stared, Lace rammed a knife into his ribs.

  “No more of that,” she hummed, twisting.

  But thank you for feeding my little toy. It does get lonely when I don’t let it sing.

  He sank to the ground and died without making a sound, and the pulsing hunger of that scale abated…for a time.

  Not long now, it whispered to its bearer. Not long at all…

  “I will need to call baqa again,” she muttered, “and then sweep.”

  Ah, the little trials of leadership.

  Sinking back into her chair, she fed the fairy another candy and turned her attention to another pressing matter: House Mishkan.

  A shadow walker entered the Mishkan grounds in the evening, and the solar exploded before dawn.

  She would have to find Reed some suitable excuse, but what witch still lived in Lumia who could fend off that panther? Lace herself would not have managed it without generous forewarning and bodies to spare.

  Perhaps I am not the only one who seeks the ancient arts…

  She flitted a hand over the reports thoughtfully.

  A noble family, ancient and regal. Quiet, yet protected. Small, yet well positioned.

  “Graced by the heavens…”

  Her hand landed on the abnormalities in those birth registries.

  A stray bolt of inspiration nudged Lace. Chewing on her lip, she fetched her histories and began to search.

***

  Solace was a bleak and grey season for the Isle of Peace, but the oppressive clouds rarely snowed. When a freak storm dumped six inches across the plains in two frigid days, all Ruhum ground to a halt. The roads closed, the manors shuttered their doors, and the villages lit great hearth fires in their pubs.

  In the old days, this was the time when the elders shared stories and the children shared crafts. Now, the radio intruded into even the most distant hamlets, and all the jockeys played news of the election from dawn to dusk.

  Alcohol, cramped spaces, cold weather, and politics all swirled in the taverns to poor results.

  In Lumia, the protestors reveled in national attention. Bundled into heavy coats, they vented their frustration with House abuses in no uncertain terms. They were supported – applauded even! – by the papers with headlines searing enough to keep a man warm: Guildsmen fired without cause, honest men driven from House jobs, and nobles supping on veal while the tenements chewed on old jerky.

  While the papers shouted, the Houses prepared for the most important event of the season. If the Harvest festival was a carnival for the common man, the winter gala brought refined flowers to bloom.

  There was quite simply no gala like the Solace gala!

  The Inventor Alva arrived in his usual, rumpled suit. These days, he sported heavy bags beneath his eyes, a sallow cast to his jowls, and a hint of liquor on his breath even while sober.

  The constables at the gate triple checked his invitation.

  Beyond, noble women posed in the grand Conclave atrium, wrapped in the cutting edge of fashion, and the men circled like either hungry wolves or needy children, depending on one’s perspective. This was a festival for women – fashion, drama, and marriage.

  As such, past experience informed Alva that no business of note would occur.

  He kept one heavy hand on the satchel at his side. He would have skipped the event entirely, but that damned Redeemer witch had the audacity to hand him chores like a truant schoolboy! As though he were one of her slack-jawed toadies! When he balked, she had insinuated his Inventions were the product of theft!

  True, Alva believed in opposition research, but he completed his work by his own hand! He merely kept abreast of the greater technological climate. He couldn’t help if there was overlap between his works and those who trailed in his shadow.

  He would complete this odious task for the Redeemer, but she would know her place soon enough.

  For an hour, the Inventor mingled with the elite, sipping wine and wincing at the half-rate musicians. Every year, the cheapskate Houses contributed less to the gala; the corners of the Conclave were dark and silent.

  At this rate, House Visage will run the country in my lifetime, he thought with a shudder.

  Mirielle waved her fingers at him from across the room, smile as bright as a shiny red apple.

  He raised his wine glass in return without enthusiasm.

  This country is on a crash course to disaster. Women in power, Inventors in disarray, and the election a farce. Reed will wring this country dry faster than any noble scion. It is high time that I relocated to a more temperate climate!

  As soon as he refilled his coffers with one last magnificent Invention.

  With his social obligations discharged, Alva abandoned the buffet and crossed the Conclave. He passed through the beam of Aure’s honeyed light and reflexively shivered.

  Never liked that thing.

  Clutching his satchel tighter, he hurried from the party. Head down, he crossed the atrium for the museum, hoping to be left alone at last.

  Instead a priest in a fiery robe guarded the entrance to the western wing. “May you find illumination in the divine!” the man intoned, sweeping through the blessing of fire with both hands.

  Alva stifled a snort and brushed past before he finished the third loop.

  The dark, quiet museum offered a respite from the reek of perfume, at least. Only a handful of noble mothers nudged their children between the exhibits: here the Hammer of His Strength behind tempered glass; there the Chisel of His Wisdom on a podium; nearby, the Saw of Revelations still remained embedded in the petrified tree where it fell. Each of these tools was a marvel of white gold that shone with an inner light.

  Polite but stern priests waited at the doorways, ready to admonish children or recite one of the insipid legends. After all, were these not the very tools with which Aure calmed the Isle of Fire, sundered his enemies, and build the Conclave?

  If these tools held any real power, the church would use them as weapons.

  Alva ducked into the side exhibits. Here, the lesser works of Aure’s first acolytes hung in simple display cases. A single priest patrolled, most of his time spent directing children to the toilets. A lonely bench waited between the exhibits, sandwich crumbs littered beneath.

  The patrolling priest nodded to Alva. “Good evening, sir. Here to see the tools of the faithful? Though no match for those in the main hall, they are still works of art in their own right.”

  “Indeed. Searching for a bit of inspiration, you might say.” His fingers drummed against the satchel.

  “God bless.”

  “Sure.”

  Alva pretended to study the dun, rusty tools and waited for the priest to bugger off.

  According to the plaque, these tools were crafted by an unknown acolyte during Aure’s time in the world. Given that the church hailed the founders as saints, this particular man must have strayed from the canon established in the following centuries. Thus, his name would have been stricken from history.

  Hickory handled and dented, the set of carpentry tools still gleamed beneath a thick patina of rust. In fact, the pattern of rust itself was swirling and furrowed in the oddest pattern…

  For a moment, the saw gleamed beneath the dirt, but Alva dismissed this as fancy.

  The priest left, escorting a small boy to the toilets.

  Alva whipped open the satchel to reveal two things: a set of replica tools and a roll of lockpicks. He set the picks against the display cases with a few practiced flicks, and he reached inside to swap the replica for the true item.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  As he grasped the handle of the rusty chisel, he felt an impossible weight in that simple tool. A mountain wrapped in a veneer of hickory and steel, it called to his soul from one craftsman to another.

  These petty thoughts are distractions from the craft; you can be so much more; release the anchor of fame and rise; Inventions are no more art than a page of arithmetic. Take up this burden. Feel its heft. Do you hear the fulfillment found in the simplest tool?

  Alva teetered, shook his head, and banished the superstitious nonsense. It was a chisel, old and worn. It weighed no more than any other.

  Indeed, he picked it up easily.

  Why does the witch care for this? Why would she spend money to have replicas of such meticulous quality crafted?

  She was blinded by her fervor like so many others. Of course the devout would fawn over aged, worn things.

  Scoffing to himself, Alva swiftly finished swapping the tools. Then he lowered the display case back into place, flicked the lock, and hurried from the museum. The entire ordeal took no longer than a trip to the bathroom, and now he only needed to await the end of this insipid party.

  A shot or two of whiskey would help speed the night along.

***

  In the nights leading to the winter gala, Oliver had repeated nightmares of tittering noble girls offering marriage proposals while stifling laughter. That night, however, he found himself so thoroughly ignored that he might as well have worn Livery black.

  Wandering the edges of the event, he found Alva at a lonesome table, buried in shot glasses.

  Glancing up, Alva rumbled, “Ah, the newest official Inventor. Does the gala please you?”

  Tugging at his suit, Oliver shrugged. “It’s an experience.”

  “A swine show of self-indulgence! Wolves bay in the snow, and they fuss over suitors for their daughters!” Loquacious with booze, the man slopped his glass. “They can’t smell the doom on the horizon. Ignorant to their own rot! Pretending the world does not slip between their fingers! Aren’t you going to sit?”

  Oliver winced. Humor the unpleasant drunk or commit to a social snub? If he snubbed, the gossipmongers would pounce faster than a fox in the chicken coup.

  High society is a poison.

  He sat.

  Alva ordered enough shots for both of them.

  They waited silently for the order as the gala spun distantly in a constellation of gold and gems. This year’s major fashion was dresses shimmering like a second skin on the hips and flaring like foam around their calves. The satin pinched so tight that the women could only wiggle on the dance floor. The older, more conservative mothers tutted at the vulgar display from behind their armor of jewelry.

  Meanwhile, the men jousted for status by flaunting lapels from various secret societies.

  Behind them all, the Livery hovered.

  This place is a battlefield!

  Tactical engagements and withdrawals; careful fencing and total routs. A noble might position one conversation within easy conversation of the Livery servants and move another far out of earshot.

  Is this my war now? My new world? Every word crafted, every engagement premeditated, as I share wine and small talk with my enemies?

  Even Oliver knew that some of the Houses on display would not survive to the next Solace if the Guilds continued their march. Strikes were a nuisance in the dead season, but they would cripple a House come Spring…

  “You seem crestfallen,” Alva remarked, vaguely pleased.

  “Noble society is…is not what I expected.” Except for perhaps a single House.

  A particular Lady.

  “No amount of gold can imbue the foolish with sense or the witless with cunning.”

  “I suppose not,” evaded the young man. Not gold, surely. But what about a demon’s kiss?

  The crowd milled, revealing Alisandra Mishkan. She wore a sleek gown of azure satin – a brazen choice, flirting with the colors of the Stormmother. Balancing that brash statement, she wore a battered Auren pendant on a wrap choker – a style of jewelry that left fashion when Ruhum still bowed to kings. Even with her hair twisted into traditional braids and heels upon her feet, she strode the battlefield like a warrior.

  Oliver’s heart skipped a beat.

  “Fancying some old blood?” Alva mocked.

  He flushed and glanced at the table.

  “You stare like a fool. The whispers in the eves say that you fancy her.”

  “Who?!” he demanded. Who had the time to waste their days measuring who stared at whom?!

   “Everyone and no one, of course.” Alva shrugged. “Some long shot investment paid in spades, though, and the eldest House is now far above your means, boy. If you need companionship, save yourself the trouble and buy it.”

  Alisandra paused at the wine fountain to speak with Mirielle Visage. Thea waited on them, two identical selves standing beside each other, but of course no one noted the remarkable resemblance. The Archangel Gabriel and the strange Sebastian foraged for appetizers along the buffet. Father Lucas spoke with an Archbishop nearby, sipping philosophy and wine in equal measure. Tura displayed some of his minor Inventions to anemic interest in the rotunda, and Novia hid the tremble in her hands by resting on a cane as she spoke to the help.

  Regardless of the rivalries or grudges, they all assembled here.

  Even Lace graced the halls, clad in a crimson gown of fires. Safely bundled into the arm of a noble lordling, she caught Oliver’s eye, smiled, and swished away.

  For a brief instant, Alisandra watched the Redeemer pass, and the Lady Mishkan’s expression left no doubt of her thoughts.

  Oliver also fought to control his expression. A mass murderer flaunting her champagne and her toys! She damn well knows half of the room wants her dead!

  What spark would light this powder keg?

  The powers that be share a room, wining, dining, and plotting.

  And if those powers should dispense with their treaties and their pretenses, would the mere mortals in this Conclave stand the slightest chance?

  We’re only human.

  And what could a human like him offer an immortal?

  Shouts rose at the door. A ragged beggar slammed through the Livery with the strength of a desperate animal. Swerving like a drunk, he shouted nonsense at the top of his lungs, one step ahead of the constables.

  “Freedom for men from oppression! Noble profligates, puppets of monsters! The living must not be slaves to the fire! The time of bloodlines is past, and the daughter of the Queen must never reign! Freedom! Freedom! No gods, no masters!”

  Security tackled the man.

  The beggar continued to shout and spit even as they dragged him away.

  The music never paused, and Livery maids swept away the stains on the tiles. In a few moments, the disruption might as well have never happened.

  “Definitely mad, but some of that rant hit the mark…” Oliver muttered to himself. Perhaps the mad noticed what the sane ignored.

  “All expenses spared,” Alva growled, finishing his shot. “Sleeping louts for security, shrill minstrels for music, stale shrimp for catering, more water than booze in every shot, and the same petty factions every year!”

  “Perhaps you have had enough to drink?” Oliver hazarded.

  “Oh? And what would you know? Created a fancy alarm bell and now you can lecture a senior Inventor?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “I’m no fool! The jealousy in your eyes is as clear as day!” Alva puffed, wobbled, and listed to port. “I will have you know that my next Invention will transform the entire world!”

  “Okay?” He doubted the sour Inventor would even remember this conversation come morning. He shifted to leave.

  “My skyship will sail the skies, a metal albatross capable of ferrying a hundred – no, two hundred! – above both land and sea at speeds unmatched by any boat!”

  Oliver froze. “A skyship.”

  “Indeed! A most marvelous creation.”

  “Roughly fifty feet stern to tail, constructed of the latest Novian alloys, a sleek tube cradled by wings?”

  “Of course not! The wings were obviously a mistake. What ship goes without sails?!”

  Oliver suddenly remembered when his notes went missing at the demonstration. That iteration had still used sails, hadn’t it? Before he realized the need for a controlled source of lift…

  Never let Alva see your notes, counseled Mirielle at the beginning.

  “Alva…a ship in air is not a ship in water. What happens when the winds cease to favor your sails?”

  “You sound like a schoolmarm,” Alva accused. “Worried over a few jostles when I speak of flight. Mankind will seize the skies!”

  Surprisingly, Oliver found himself calm. Even since his discussion with Thea, he wrestled with the dilemma of their program. How could anyone, even a demon, control the ripples from introducing entirely foreign concepts to mankind? What if the disruption of Inventors brought chaos instead of progress?

  Mirielle’s kiss only whispered of wonders. Perhaps she wanted her pets to focus on the treats.

  But what about when some enterprising soul thought to load cannons onto a skyship? Or mines? What recourse would there be against a foe in the high skies? The clouds would become another battleground.

  An Inventor of vaccines could create plagues. An Inventor of metals could build an army.

  The lullaby could no longer stifle the tumult of visions and nightmares in his head.

  What did it truly mean to create a better world?

  Alva stared into his drink, turning morose.

  This was the man who captivated the world on Novia’s heels, but now he stank of whiskey and failure. He had not found a new Invention in years – not until he sought an audience with Lace in the Dreamer’s Den.

  “Are you sure you want the responsibility of this all?” Oliver asked. “Those skyships could spark wars the likes of which we have not foreseen.”

   “Quarreling lovers can start a war. Drunk nobles can start a war. What’s your point?”

  “We don’t have to be part of this.”

  Admittedly, Oliver couldn’t stop the program. If the demons dictated a technology, they would find a new pet easily enough.

  A lullaby once told him that he was special. Noble, even. A martyr on the altar of untold success and adulation.

  What a farce.

  “Don’t be a coward, boy.”

  Oliver shrugged and raised his glass. “Then you are a better servant than I. May you find all the fame and fortune you can swallow.”

  “Your petty jealousy shows your true colors. Fine! If you ever try to take so much as a step in my labs, I will see you run out of town as a thief!”

  Oliver encountered a secondary revelation on human nature. Man, no matter his shape, perceived others to be like himself. Of course a thief of Inventions would concern himself greatly with the prospect of his own – stolen! – works being pilfered.

  “Whatever makes you happy, Alva,” Oliver replied, standing.

  Alva shook his head. “And I thought you had potential when first we met! Just another disappointment.”

  “Mirielle agrees, I’m sure,” the youth concurred.

  The young man took his leave. Circling the periphery of the excitement, he kept his head down. His roving eyes would endanger Alisandra; better that he count tiles. Once free of the Conclave, he asked a servant, “Would you please find me the Livery servant with long, straight black hair to the small of her back?”

  The servant nodded. “Very good, sir. Shall she meet you here?”

  “In the museum, please.” No one ever went in there.

  A few minutes later, Thea found him in a quiet museum hallway away from the rush. Mirielle accompanied the doll, swishing her wine glass between two fingers.

  “Is something the matter?” Mirielle asked. “You seem rather resolute tonight, my dear Oliver.”

  He addressed Thea directly. “Alva has stolen the designs for the airship and plans to unveil them soon.”

  Again, Mirielle spoke first. “That cur! He begins to test my patience.”

  She smiled, a sweet reassurance tinged with promise and underwritten by a nameless song. Her body itself could be a reward, one as of yet unclaimed, for the most noble of martyrs…

  “Stop that!” he hissed, clenching his fists.

  “Stop what?”

  “Using your power to arouse me!” he admitted, red faced. “I did not ask for your body!”

  The music quieted around him, and Mirielle hummed. “I suppose not.”

  “Why do you play the minx, then? Surely you can wear any form you please!”

  “We are not the ones who need to be pleased,” Thea interjected.

  “I am the Lady Visage,” Mirielle said. “A dilettante blessed with too much money and a taste for hedonism who mints Inventors like clockwork. You would be amazed how many more people were willing to accept this premise once I doubled my bust size, dear Oliver.”

  What does she even look like? he wondered, outside the burning of my own desire?

  “All human behavior utilizes stereotyping,” Thea continued. “Witches wear veils, nobles silver, and merchants gold. By arbitrary symbols of culture, man sorts those he meets into categories of expected behavior. The Inventors represent a grave threat to the established order. What motivation would compel a woman of means to pursue a program that would likely lead her own House to eventual dissolution?”

  “She must be immoral or foolish,” Mirielle agreed. “Tell me, Oliver. If I wore meek dresses and spoke in a high accent, wouldn’t that be so much more suspicious?”

  If he could see with eyes freed from his skull, were her eyes green, brown or blue?

  “It helps that I do enjoy sex,” the demon hummed, “but I rather doubt you called us to discuss the Auren church’s antiquated notions of female propriety.”

  What she offered was not lovemaking but the shadow of his own needs, wrapped in flesh and kept around just long enough for him to finish.

  “Do not worry, Oliver. House Visage will have Alva sanctioned immediately.”

  The demon adjusted her lullaby, and it whispered new praise. Ah, most perceptive Inventor. You have even figured the demons out! These matters are beneath your attention, and so many more Inventions await. Won’t you be the hero the world needs?

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said through gritted teeth. “Alva is welcome to it.”

  “How generous…” the demon of indulgence said.

  “I don’t care who puts their name on the first airship, but you need to consider what you unleash! If I can brainstorm warfare from the skies over a shot of whiskey, then the Ruhum military won’t be far behind. What happens when the Conclave decides the new toys are the perfect way to deal with Moros? With Wave’s Lament?!”

  Mirielle sniffed. “Do not speak to me of risk…” she began.

  Thea interrupted. “Your understanding is incomplete, Oliver Oshton.”

  He crossed his arms. “Enlighten me.”

  “Technological advancement offers humanity the best possible quality of life in the current configuration of Foundations. We have calibrated the schedule of advancement to minimize the window for asymmetric advantage.” She tilted her head. “If you wish, you may release the Inventions for anti-air weaponry. Airships are highly vulnerable to such emplacements.”

  “Anti-air weaponry…?”

  “Did you think we would grant Ruhum such an advantage? We do not pick winners in such a manner. By the time airplanes soar above Lumia, Wave’s Lament will have perfected the balancing artillery.”

  “And how many people die if you miss the schedule by a month?!” he snapped incredulously.

  “Less than died in the last year from infectious disease,” Thea explained. “Death is an inevitability. A function, like pain, that we seek to minimize.”

  “What if you’re wrong?!”

  “Wrong to bring humanity to a brighter future?” Anyone else would have been joking or insane with that statement, but not Thea the Illuminated. “Futures are created, Oliver. If you held in your grasp the knowledge of a lost age, would you sit on your hands?”

  “Yet somehow only you have the grace to bequeath it,” Oliver retorted.

  Thea glanced at Mirielle and shrugged.

  The demon of indulgence smiled. “Oliver, you are wonderfully perceptive, but you are starting to sound a bit too much like the angels for my tastes. You should stick to being the noble martyr.”

  In three mincing steps, she backed Oliver against the wall.

  This time she dispensed with the foreplay.

  She shoved him against the stone, caught him in a kiss, and once more flooded into him.

  A deal with devils. If that’s how you want to conceive of our bond, I don’t mind. Poor, martyr Oliver. Remember the wonderful sorrow of your shame. Isn’t it such a superb fantasy? You alone know the truth, and you must carry it through the darkness of the romantic night…

  Hot shame bloomed in his head. He would do anything necessary to make a better world, even if it cost his honor…

  Just like that, dear Oliver. That sweetest indulgence worth more than any gold. We all have needs, and is it not better for a young man to be misunderstood?

  Oliver drifted above himself, a witness to his own life. He couldn’t even deny her words. He played the spy, the lone wolf, the Inventor misunderstood…

  Even disillusionment could cast a noble mien. Brooding could be its own pleasure, wrapped in the dark cloak of knowing cynicism.

  We are flexible, Oliver. What would you like to play with? Who would you like to be? If the clouds draw your dreams to the skies, then we can show you so much more than barometers and weather vanes…

  Visions of something called terraforming dawned in his mind, terrifying in its simplicity. A few chain reactions, nurtured with the same care shown to a vat of booze, and a planet could be remade…

  Or a living one ruined beyond all hope.

  It will go better this time, promised the lullaby. Take my hand and dance.

  Except Oliver was tired of dancing.

  Deep inside, he felt something flare in defiance. The demon wanted to throw him to the sea of his own desires, a place where she would easily steer his course. Her lullaby would captain the vessel, and he would pose heroically on the prow.

  This new strength rose swiftly, roaring, and shoved aside the sweet lullaby. It flooded into his arms, clenched his fists, and bid him seize his own destiny.

  Pinned against the wall, her knee between his legs, he slugged Mirielle in the stomach.

  Part of him expected to die with the next breath, but better to die than to live a slave.

  Yet Mirielle gasped, no greater than a mortal woman.

  It hurts? It hurts, it hurts, it hurts! You little brat, why would you hit me?!

  Her music soured, echoing down the hallway with an edge so sharp it cracked display cases.

  Every time the same, burning bruising welts and cuts. From every angle, every thorn, the sharp edges of life draw blood! Why are we here only to suffer? Why why why?! The world should not be this way there should not be this burning curse to cast us down. I can exterminate it I must exterminate it the end of pain!

  She staggered backwards, madness in her eyes. Her lullaby ran free, singing the truth beneath the minx.

  Never to lie entombed in the dead undying grey catacombs beneath Yesod!

  His knees surrendered under the weight of that torrent.

  “This is for your own good,” Mirielle hissed, clutching her stomach. “All of this is for you!”

  Heaven can be drawn down. Malkuth purified. I can bring home here.

  The demon raised her hand. “I can make you obey. I can make you believe whatever I damn well please!”

  There was music on her fingertips, sharp as claws and ready to strike.

  Oliver pushed onto hands and knees like a drunken sailor, struggling to see through his own eyes and not those of this mad demon.

  Mirielle reared.

  Thea caught her raised hand, interlacing cool fingers through Mirielle’s own. Stray notes flayed the wood from the doll’s fingertips, but she stared at her partner in silence.

  The two of them alone, shielded from the cacophony of need and desire.

  “You are…the angel of comfort…” Oliver slurred, stumbling through foreign memories. “Lost…like me…in the deluge…”

  So many comforts so many needs and they just keep coming a sea that cannot be swallowed.

  “What would you know of pain?” Mirielle demanded.

  Have you watched your loved ones die? Seen the hope snuffed from children’s eyes? Held the grieving widow close? Have you opened yourself to the world to offer them comfort and found yourself flooded by the grief and pain and loss?!

  Thea firmly pressed the demon’s hand downwards, ignoring the cracks radiating up her carven arm.

  “I can force him…” the demon of indulgence pleaded to her partner.

  Thea shook her head. “At the cost of his own initiative and creativity. We do not lack for candidates.”

  “He hit me!”

  Haven’t I had enough of pain? How much more must we endure?!

  “If he dares again, I will kill him.”

  Through Mirielle, Oliver heard what only those two shared.

  Let us be alone. Their needs have no claim over you. I am here.

  The demon of indulgence sniffed, mollified, and the lullaby faded once more into a background hum.

  Her memories drained out his ears like the remnants of a hangover…

  “House Visage revokes your patronage,” Mirielle announced, smoothing wrinkles from her dress with supernatural ease. “Go beg Alisandra for money.”

  She whirled on a heel.

  “…and don’t come crying to me when you see what the angels really are.”

  Hand in hand, the demons departed.

  Oliver sank to the floor, cheek against the stone. The foundation beneath seemed to hum against his skin like a live wire behind cheap insulation.

  “Well, that escalated quickly,” he remarked to the floor. “I think I’m ready to go home now.”

  His head felt empty as the sky, thoughts quiet as a country night. When was the last time his mind was so still? With all that extra brain power, maybe he could help Tura with the movies outside of town.

  Last week managed over a thousand people, Solace be damned. Ah, Tura’s gonna need help getting enough bonfires and coats…

  Who could have predicted movies would be such a hit?

  Certainly, they were a welcome break from the worries of an Inventor…