Once more the heathens of the south lay claim to divinity. Defying Aure, they declare the return of their false goddess. Do not be fooled, my children! Those baptized in Fire will see this pretender for what she is: a prostitute witch, buoyed by false works, who will only lead her people to damnation.

  Alone on the radio, the Auren preacher alternated between dire portents and exhortations to faith in a well-oiled rhythm. He had rambled for six full hours, and another surely waited for when his voice finally tired.

  To the South, a heathen goddess walked the streets this night, dispensing miracles to her children. Through the miracle of radio, Wave’s Lament could proclaim her divinity to the entire world. In order to best spare the innocent ears of its citizens, Ruhum now broadcast powerful static across the radio waves, drowning out any and all communication on any band but the church’s favored channel.

  Thus, a preacher echoed through the vast, lonely warehouse instead of jazz.

  Oliver, (potential) Inventor of Skies, sighed. Icy hells and eternal torture, just like grandpa loved.

  The Stormmother was reported to control winds, rains, and waves with equal ease. If so, she did so without disturbing the tubes of liquid mercury on Oliver’s desk. If she was so powerful, why had her reign of conquest stopped short of Ruhum? Why didn’t they all wear blue and sing her hymns?

  Quite honestly, Oliver considered Wave’s Lament so remote it was almost mythical.

  Not the sort of place a good, faithful boy traveled.

  Tuning out the radio, he jotted the latest mercury measurements into his ledgers. He peeked out the window at the clouds, checked the rain gauge, and nodded to himself.

  “Storm tonight.”

  His pronouncement echoed through the laboratory. Mirielle had bought him a warehouse large enough to house a yacht, and he barely filled one corner with his desks and a pallet. All he really needed was a few instruments and a good view of the horizon.

  I should fill the rest with helium and watch it float away…

  He blinked several times, mulling a sudden idea.

  Sacks of helium winched to a cabin…

  Inspiration sparked a brush fire, and he rushed to find fresh paper. His muse raced through his mind, a deer in the brush, and he chased her with his pencil.

  Let not a single child starve.

  Somewhere in the fugue, Mirielle admitted herself. She approached with careful steps and peered over his shoulder.

  “Why are you here?” he muttered, scribbling until his hand cramped.

  The demon draped herself across his back languidly. “I see something new. What will you call this one?”

  Her warmth against his back threatened to derail his train of thought. By all rights, it was a warmth he should have coveted with all his being. “I don’t know yet.”

  “An airship,” she suggested.

  Yet even her practiced little wiggle stirred nothing. “I suppose that follows.”

  “House Visage eagerly awaits your command.”

  Oliver squirmed, shaking her away. He bargained with demons, but he did not dwell with them! “House Visage is generous.”

  She persisted, rubbing a finger up his spine. “This was our bargain, yes? We will bring this world into the light.”

  Her touch guided his mind, the memories of that bargain bubbling to the fore. “For a better world…”

  “An airship will ride at the mercy of the Harvest winds,” the demon mused. “Perhaps you can find something stronger. Sleeker. Can you remember that for me?”

  His dreams were such a whirlwind of things remembered and forgotten and remembered again…

  Some of those forgotten things were even his.

  Oliver squirmed away from his papers and the demon both. “What brings you tonight?”

  “Our dinner engagement. Have you forgotten?”

  “You took me to dinner yesterday.” He spent four hours listening to one of the election candidates, Father Lucas, wax poetic about the minutiae of theology – hardly the ideal conversation for a lively meal!

  “And tonight. You are new, my dear. Everyone wants to meet you.”

  “If you mean to abandon me with another priest, I refuse!”

  “Nothing of the sort. We are going to a noble social. Quite a-religious, I assure you.”

  He glanced down at himself. Wrinkled button shirt, suspenders, and denim jeans. “I’ll change,” he sighed.

  “Why? Disheveled and distracted is the perfect Inventor look. You want everyone to know your new place in the world, do you not?”

  “You ran my face in the papers,” the youth replied sourly. “They know what I look like.”

  “You’re welcome,” she hummed. “Shall we?”

  She steered the young man for the door. As they approached the exit, the service door opened before a servant woman with straight, shimmering black hair.

  The servant ducked her face behind a curtain of hair and murmured a bland apology.

  “See to matters here,” Mirielle ordered.

  The servant nodded, brushing her hair from her face. As her fingers split the strands into two neat rows, their joints were for a moment articulated woodwork.

  Oliver started.

  Mirielle pressed her fingers into the small of his back, and a cool wash of indifference rushed through him.

  “Please don’t touch the experiments,” he murmured, drifting in a dream.

  “Yes, sir,” the servant agreed.

  Mirielle tugged the Inventor boy to the waiting car.

  Behind them, Thea the Illuminated quietly paged through the pile of notes. When she found mistakes in the postulates, she corrected them with his own handwriting.

  Meanwhile, Oliver slid into the backseat of the Visage car with Mirielle, mind still a touch foggy. “Who’s driving?” he asked, blinking slowly at the empty driver’s seat.

  “Does it matter?” Mirielle asked. She waved a hand, and the partition slid up with a faint ripple of living metal.

  “I suppose not,” he agreed.

  They crossed from the waterfront to the noble hill without fanfare. Once past the ivory gates and into the winding lanes of the rich, though, they encountered a problem: both sides of the lane before the mansion in question were crammed with identical black cars.

  “Hmm. Fashionably late,” the demon tutted.

  Her car inched forward, sniffing for a spot.

  “Ah, yes, that will do,” she said at last.

  “Where?” Oliver asked, glancing. He saw no open spots.

  “There.” She pointed a manicured nail at a wagon. Three men dragged casks of wine from the back at top speed, sweating despite the cool night.

  Lumian law specified that cars received priority for parking regardless of owner. The fact that only the highest echelon of society could afford automobiles was, naturally, a coincidence of no regard.

  Oliver shook his head. “We can find another. They’re working.”

  “Let them know, dear.” She motioned imperiously.

  The passenger door popped open, the seat beneath Oliver squirmed, and the car heaved him out. He stumbled onto the road, not entirely sure what just occurred. The door slammed shut behind.

  “Mirielle! I think something is queer about your car!”

  The nearest workman turned, cask on his shoulders.

  “Right!” Oliver coughed. “Are you guys almost done? The lady in the car–”

  The man stiffened. “We’ll move it right away, sir!”

  “Sir?” The worker could be Oliver’s father! “No, I don’t mind. Look, if you lose the spot, you’ll have to carry that junk halfway up the–”

  “Move the damned cart!” the man roared to his companions. “Make way for the good sir and lady! Begging your   pardon, sir.”

  “Stop calling me sir!” the Inventor groaned. “Look, I can help! We can get the last round in a split…”

  But the workers were already frantically hitching the horse.

  “Sorry about this,” Oliver finished lamely.

  The workers mounted the wagon and rushed down the hill, facing a long hike up the incline for the rest of their load.

  Mirielle neatly claimed the newly open spot and emerged from her seat with a smile. “Was that so hard?”

  “I tried to apologize,” he muttered.

  “What for?” she asked.

  For interrupting their work. For sentencing those men to three times the labor so a noble woman could spare herself a few steps. For letting the men believe he was a ‘good sir’.

  “Nothing,” he sighed.

  “Good.” She hooked her arm into his and dragged him into the party.

  Once inside, the demon paraded Oliver around like a new puppy. She kept her fingers clamped on his forearm like a vice as she threw him at every noble in reach. He shook hands with the Houses until his palms ached.

  As if any of these dandies would dirty their hands with a wine cask, he thought. I’m not like them.

  Free of Mirielle at last, he circulated aimlessly. A half dozen merchants asked after his potential Inventions, their intent clear, and an equal number of noble wives inquired as to his marital status. He fled at the speed of politeness, seeking a quiet corner. Perhaps he could find an empty bedroom and continue his calculations from memory.

  I haven’t even tackled distribution yet. The backlog on Novian steel is going to kill me. Do I really need that high a grade of metal? Maybe it would be cheaper to replace any warning towers that get ruined by storms.

  The rooms were all occupied, many with giggling occupants, and he snuck to the garden next. There, he stumbled upon another demonstration of the moving picture.

  Tura perched on a crate beside his rattling contraption, waving enthusiastically at the same reel of a horse’s canter from the symposium. “…and with this, we will be able to record our lives for posterity! The moving picture will do for our creative souls what the radio has done for our minds! Messages shipped via photomemory reel will allow a father to speak with his children from the far flung reaches of creation as though he stood in their very nursery!”

  A merchant woman fanned herself from the audience. “Very interesting, Tura…but do you have time for such toys when you are running for election? Aren’t you worried the Conclave might retaliate against candidates?”

  Tura smacked the lever on his projector, and it stuttered to a halt. “Did anyone have any questions about the machine?”

  Oliver raised his hand.

  “Ah, our youngest member. Yes?”

  “What inspired you?” Oliver harbored an ulterior motive for his question. How does an actual genius think?

  “A dream of great insight,” Tura replied. “Like a bolt of lightning to my sleeping mind!”

  The youth pondered. Could it be so? A man so keen that even his dreams create wonders?

  A tiny part of him wondered at the coincidence – Mirielle was a woman of dreams, was she not? But the whisper could not be heard over the roar of his own self-doubt.

  Meanwhile, the nobles offered no further questions. The Livery servants began to disassemble the machine, and the crowd dispersed without as much as a conciliatory excuse.

  Tura watched his customers vanish, hands on his hips, and turned to the youth. “Shall we get a drink, my young companion?”

  “Sure,” Oliver agreed. Stifling as a high brow party could be, the bars spared no expense. There was enough booze on hand to stock a pirate ship. He had only sampled a dozen of the hundreds of custom drinks on offer.

  They stole two open stools at a bar near the swan pond and ordered extravagant concoctions. Tura swirled his expertly, and Oliver poked at the little umbrella topping a hard liquor.

  “Has this new life treated you fairly so far?” Tura asked, brushing his hair from his cheek.

  “Well enough,” the youth evaded. “Was the transition hard for you? As a foreigner, I mean?”

  “Last week a noblewoman asked me if I would lose my Inventive powers were she to cut my hair,” Tura said wryly, sipping his drink. With his free hand, he rubbed two long strands together.

  Do the noble girls get jealous of his hair?

  “Truly? She had to ask? Of course you would,” Oliver replied, equally wry. He took a sip and burst into a hacking cough. Was he drinking charcoal cinders?!

  The Inventor smiled. “That one is terrible, isn’t it?” He waited a moment for Oliver to stop sputtering and then asked, “What was your life before inspiration took you up?”

  “Ditch digger.” Oliver forced himself to sip again and blanched. No better on the second test; why was this drink so expensive? “My life has gone insane. Two weeks ago, I slept in a barn outside of town. Now I’m an Inventor. If I had told Edward and Donovan that I was going to be one of the Inventors while laying on a hay bale, they would have mocked me for months!”

  A woman in black a few stools down perked at the name ‘Donovan’.

  “The Houses move quickly,” Tura remarked. “The best to lock neophytes into lucrative contracts while inexperienced.”

  Oliver drummed his fingers on the bar. “Would the Whistlers be interested in weather systems?”

  The older Inventor cocked an eyebrow. “Currently, the Whistlers are most interested in remaining independent.”

  A sudden blunder into geopolitics. What did the youth know of Whistler needs? Long-haired horse lovers who galivant from horizon to horizon under an open sky…

  Rather idyllic, really.

  “Relax, my young friend. If I took the energy to be angry at every Lumian who knew nothing of my homeland, I would have no time for my work. Suffice for now that the march of progress has uneven steps.”

  “Sorry.”

  “All is forgiven. As it stands, I am a Whistler, and I’m always interested in new systems.”

  A Livery servant interrupted them at this point. Bowing, the man said to Tura, “Sir, the machine is refueled, and the next demonstration gathers.”

  “Very good.” Tura nodded to Oliver. “Stop by my lab, my young friend. Any time.”

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Maybe I will,” he replied with a toast. He liked this boisterous foreigner.

  Unless this is an act so he can snatch my notes. Aure above, do Inventors always have to be so paranoid? Is that my lot? I’m going to have an ulcer by Spring!

  The seat beside him did not stay empty for long. A woman in black velvet slipped onto the stool, leaned towards Oliver, and flirted with her long, heavy lashes. “Hello there.”

  Oliver jerked from his thoughts. “Hello?”

  Please don’t be another solicitor.

  “Perhaps the party wears thin?” she said, launching immediately into her pitch. “There are deeper mysteries to be found…for a friend of Donovan.”

  “You knew Donovan?” he asked carefully.

  “Oh, yes. He is quite the inspiration.”

  She offered and Oliver accepted a business card.

The Dreamer’s Den

9th bell

Mysteries for the seeker

  The letters were a bold purple, but the paper was cheap as tissue.

  Below the header, the address was in the center of a squalid tenement.

  “An opium den?” he guessed.

  “Nothing so crass,” she reassured. “Come at nine bells. All friends of Donovan are welcome.”

  “I will consider the offer,” he replied with automatic courtesy.

  “Then perhaps we will see each other again.” She rose in a flourish of skirts and vanished.

  He rolled the card over his knuckles and sighed. “These parties are exhausting.”

  “Agreed,” said the bartender. “Another?”

  “Whatever Tura ordered.”

  “Sure thing.”

  As Oliver sipped the next concoction, he belatedly realized the kind of eavesdropping a bartender could exercise at a party like this. For example, hearing the banter between two Inventors…

  Grimacing, he took his drink and departed for a stroll through the garden.

  The cocktail percolated in his gut, a ball of sugar and bad decisions – the alchemy of grand mistakes.

  Donovan abandoned me to the constables without a second thought. Aure above only knows where he has fled now and what kind of trouble he’s causing.

  Then why did some rich woman know him personally?

  We worked together. Shared a loft. I would have known if he was sneaking off to opium dens. Right?

  Yet Donovan was a mason. He often left early and returned late – presumably the result of his work. Presumably. Oliver wasn’t exactly responsible for supervising a master Mason’s work.

  What did Oliver truly know about the man responsible for this whole misadventure?

  Swallowing the dregs, he shook his head. Only one way to find out.

  Oliver went searching for a ride.

***

  The tenements reeked, a mixture of unwashed bodies and despair that lingered on the tongue.

  Drab, rotted wood, the oldest buildings in modern Lumia crowded against narrow streets piled with garbage. Though not even the ninth bell, most of the windows were dark. For the Guild-less peasants in those cramped apartments, the work day would begin well before dawn tomorrow.

  “Are you sure of this destination, sir?” the Livery driver asked. “This is hardly the place for good folk.”

  Oliver noted a few men lounging on a darkened stoop, and they noted his fancy ride.

  “I used to live here.”

  Fifty men to a crowded hallway, rank with sweat and flatulence. No cool breeze, no way to navigate the tangle of legs in the pitch darkness.

  The driver cleared his throat. “I see.”

  “Those men are probably under Harkness,” the youth mused. “The ones two blocks back would be the Lufters, assuming their boss hasn’t gotten himself killed.”

  “You seem well informed on the politics of ruffians.” The driver’s eyes flashed with interest.

  “There isn’t the luxury of avoiding it here.” Ten percent of his daily wages went to the Lufter gang while he lived in this fetid place. Protection or extortion, depending on the day, but utterly necessary if he wanted to keep his kneecaps intact.

  If it was not for Mirielle, he would have had to move back here with Edward and Donovan gone.

  Why did Donovan even offer to share rent with me in the first place? We barely knew each other. There was one answer, of course, obvious and bitter: Donovan picked a rube at random to fill the last slot.

  There but for the grace of God – and demons – go I, he thought darkly, passing the gangsters.

  “This should be the street, sir,” the Livery driver said. He pulled the car to a stop before a dingy storefront. “I apologize for the delay.”

  “No worries,” the youth mumbled. He slid from the vehicle and double checked the business card.

  Despite assurance otherwise, the Dreamer’s Den certainly resembled an opium den. Dim, dank, reeking of incense, and crammed between a butcher and a tool shop, the store would struggle to attract legitimate business even here. A single light bulb glowed purple behind the thin curtains.

  Oliver approached carefully, hands in his pockets, and cursed himself for returning to this neighborhood without even the slight protection of a pocket knife. He was clear-headed enough from the drive across town, and grand mistakes lost their luster under the sober eye.

  The door drifted open, revealing the woman in black velvet from the bar. She wore a thin veil of silver gauze over her eyes and a self-satisfied smile on her lips. “Welcome, friend of Donovan, to my Dreamer’s Den.”

  She took in the dingy storefront with a stiff, half-arc sweep of her arm. The fabric across her shoulders and neck was pinned so tight that she could not raise her elbow higher than her ribs.

  Fashion is insane, Oliver noted. Aloud, he asked, “May I have your name?”

  She presented him with a black veil. “We do not use our names here. You will understand why soon.”

  “Worried about the Inquisition?”

  No name? That’s going to be inconvenient. Well, I’ll just call you Lace.

  “They are but the outward manifestation of a much deeper rot,” Lace replied, waiting for him to pull on the veil.

  He found the strings and tugged the sheer fabric across his eyes. Immediately, he understood the real purpose of a veil. The cloth filtered the room, obscuring the cheap furniture and questionable stains.

  Certainly a cheaper way to upscale your décor…

  “The other seekers have not yet arrived. Allow me to show you to your seat.”

  “The ninth bell is any moment now!”

  “Your punctuality is appreciated,” she assured him. Brushing aside layered curtains, she nudged him into a darkened room.

  He stumbled, veil-blind, around the edge of a round table. A cheap crystal ball dominated the table, and beaded curtains hid the doors to further areas.

  “Is any chair fine?”

  “Yes, my lord,” Lace said.

  “Don’t call me that.” He selected the furthest seat, the better to watch new arrivals.

  He waited a long while, eyes slowly adjusting to the dark and mind swimming with second guesses.

  Finally, somewhere near the tenth bell, a thick man in a red mask barreled into view. “Let’s see this, then,” he growled impatiently.

  A journeyman Stonemason followed, flanking his master like a hound.

  Wait a second…I recognize that guy! That’s the jerk who dropped that hammer on my foot last Spring! Oliver thought, scowling. I limped for a week!

  Not that he had reported the incident to the foreman. This hound was among the favored, a scion to Guildsmaster Reed. Such men appeared on job sites as nothing more than a formality, and the work they shirked would fall onto Oliver’s own shoulders instead.

  “Drink?” the journeyman asked his boss.

  “Whiskey, Thomas.”

  Guildsmaster Reed only needed a single glance to both assess and dismiss the shabbily dressed young man across the table.

  Oliver held his tongue, and they sat in uncomfortable silence while the Guildsman’s toady fetched a drink.

  After a few minutes, another batch of attendees staggered in, reeking of booze and tittering like school children.

  “Ah, this one has ambiance!”

  “Do you think she will have a fairy? They’re such graceful animals!”

  “They suck the breath from newborn babes!”

  “Oh, that’s just church hogwash.”

  “Don’t let the priests hear you say that! You could lose your title!”

  “Please. I do hope this one is real, though. Last time, I found two puppeteers behind a curtain!”

  They bantered freely, claiming half the table and ignoring the other half.

  Last to arrive was a tall man in a cheap suit. He fidgeted like a choir boy with the donations stuffed in his pockets, and his compulsive fiddling revealed an Auren necklace tucked into his collar.

  A priest… Oliver considered a moment. Lace plays with high-status toys.

  Could the priest be a representative for Father Lucas? After all, one election candidate was already here…

  As soon as the last guest arrived, Lace swept from the darkness, assumed the stool next to Oliver, and raised her hands in prayer. “Let this gathering be sanctified.”

  The crystal ball shuddered, levitated from the table, and began to pulse with light. Its radiance caught the fragments of glass woven into the beads, and the room danced with color.

  “Only the brave dare seek the forbidden knowledge past the light of day.”

  One of the nobles tittered in glee.

  The crystal ball wobbled unsteadily, barely maintaining position. Oliver snuck a glance at its base. A large, brackish spot stained the underside. When he squinted, trying to find the pattern in its brush marks, his blood began to itch…

  Lace continued. “Much has been lost to the flames. Much has been stolen by those who pretend to glory. We are not what we once were.”

  “Yes, we are sobering up,” one of the nobles announced.

  Lace waved a hand, and a beer bobbed into the room. It floated straight into the noble’s waiting hand.

  “Ah, this is true magic. You should teach my wife.” He tipped back the beer, revealing that same stain on the bottom of the bottle.

  The chorus tittered in faux outrage.

  The witch forced a smile, all teeth. “Never fear. Mysteries await those who seek.”

  At her command, a procession of household objects floated into the room. Drinks bobbed to waiting hands, emerald-flame candles tottered on their stands, and folded paper animals roared.

  Copper sulfate? Oliver wondered, watching the candles. His teacher once demonstrated the interaction of minerals and a candle flame.

  Drunk nobles clapped – either enthralled or disinterested.

  “Oh, I love these shows!”

  “Every witch knows this one.”

  “Drink your beer. This will be more fun with your mouth full.”

  The witch clapped, and a gout of flame erupted from the center of the table. The fire twisted and spun, folding over itself until its strands formed a strange sigil above the crystal ball.

  For his part, Oliver yelped!

  “Fire is beloved, is it not?” the witch asked. “Dangerous only to infidels. Do you have something to hide, my masked Inventor?”

  One of the nobles snickered. They had all come prepared for such mysteries.

  That or they were too inebriated to react.

  “Or what of you, priest?” she challenged, smile thin and sharp. “Does your heart burn with guilt?”

  The priest squirmed queasily.

  Guildsmaster Reed leaned towards the flame, hairy fingers interlaced. “Afraid of a little heresy, Father?”

  “I came with an open mind,” the priest defended.

  “Open minds get the pyre,” tittered one of the drunks.

  Reed snorted. “You sods afraid of an Inquisition? Please. Do you know what I did the last time an Inquisitor came knocking on my door?”

  “What?” asked the priest.

  “I invited him for dinner.” Guildsmaster Reed smiled thinly.

  The sigil trembled midair.

  Lace rapped her knuckles on the table like a schoolmarm. “This rune is ruach, the blessed wind and the first breath of the born. The word is forgotten; its power lost. Our inheritance has been burned and buried! In the ages before this land, man could fly with the ease of a bird!”

  Oliver blinked, blinded by a fragment of almost memory. Metal and air, floating through the skies…

  Guildsmaster Reed scoffed. “A pretty picture. A cute distraction.” He shoved back his chair and yanked up the tablecloth. “But the true power is easily revealed!”

  Oliver peeked under the table and caught his first glimpse of a phoenix.

  The bird of flame perched on a metal hook, its whole being bent to maintaining the flame above. It glowed like a hot coal, ripples of heat centered just above its nose, and swayed like a meditating mystic in its trance.

  “I tire of these sales pitches pretending to mysticism,” the Guildsman muttered, kneeling. He raised one meaty hand, leaned forward, and backhanded the bird across the beak.

  The phoenix staggered like a chicken; the flame above extinguished; the smoldering colors in its plumage snuffed out; and a dun-colored bird the size of a rooster toppled insensate to the floor.

  Reed rose, accepting a handkerchief from his toady. His hand steamed, scorched red, and he wiped at the spot idly. “Elemental beasts are still beasts. Serpents to bubble your bath and a phoenix to conjure up a display. They live, they breed, they bleed.”

  “You think you know higher powers?” Lace asked mildly.

  “Floating drinks? Heating stones? Its all just the power of blood. What do these creatures have that a dog doesn’t? I could buy myself a menagerie from any of a half dozen different shops in town. Donovan’s missive promised power, and all I see here is another zookeeper.”

  The drunk noble burped. “Oh, you know Donovan?”

  The woman next to him offered a skeptical stare. “Everyone who is anyone knows Donovan, dear.”

  Oliver swallowed hard.

  “Donovan,” Lace repeated, smile fading. “He told you his vision, did he not? A world free of false gods. A world where pretender kings are toppled from their thrones…A world Redeemed.”

  “If you want a scholarship, go beg at the university like the rest of the bookworms,” Guildsmaster Reed snorted. “This is a waste of my time.”

  Fickle as children, the same nobles who clapped moments earlier now nodded with Reed. The spell was broken, and they finished their drinks.

  “Oh, I knew it was a phoenix.”

  “You wouldn’t know a phoenix if it bit you.”

  “A bit of a disappointment, really.”

  “Shall I fetch the car?”

  “Do you think we can still catch the dark waltz?”

  Lace watched them, her expression too placid. Then she popped her neck, the sound oddly sharp. “Then you do not care if false gods should rule, Reed?”

  “One god’s as false as another. Somebody has to rule.”

  The petty nobles rose to leave, already discussing their next séance. The priest followed, quietly warding against evil on his way.

  Lace and Reed stared, a duel of Wills.

  The entire world had forgotten Oliver, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to remind them.

  Lace pursed her lips. “And what of mortal abuses? Our own rapacious clergy and those sodden twits we call our Lords?”

  Reed dropped his handkerchief on the table. “File a report with the constables.”

  She surged to her feet, slammed her palms to the table, and snarled.

  The floating candles crashed to the floor, splattering wax across the matted carpet.

  “Give me your watch,” she demanded.

  “Why?” he scoffed.

  “You wish to witness power, Guildsman?” she taunted, teeth bared.

  “It would make a refreshing change of pace.”

  “Then put the damned watch on the table!”

  Reed shrugged, and his toady deposited a gold-plated watch on the tablecloth.

  Lace fetched a stick of chalk from the corner, yanked off the tablecloth, and shoved the crystal ball to the floor.

  “You think that runes are for display, Guildsman? That words are weightless?”

  She laid forth a chalk circle and a series of mad lines. Stabbing and grinding, she crisscrossed from one end of the circle to the other, inscribing symbols for the primal elements that would earn any honest folk a quick visit from the church.

  Oliver tried to discern her reasoning, but a ritual circle of power and gibberish in chalk looked an awful lot alike to his eyes. She muttered as she worked, Reed waited impatiently, and Thomas chewed some tobacco. Lacking anything better, the young Inventor glanced under the table.

  The phoenix laid senseless across the nasty carpet.

  Stooping, he scooped the creature into his hands. Warm as morning coal, it shivered against his forearm. He ran a finger along its neck and felt nothing broken.

  “You’ll be okay, I think,” he murmured, shuffling back to his seat. crawling back to his seat. He laid the bird across his lap and wrapped it in the discarded tablecloth.

  “…this art was stolen from us!” Lace continued, her fine sleeves stained with chalk. “But we remember what has passed!”

  Tossing away the chalk, she exhaled like a bull, dropped the watch into the circle, and spoke. “Baqa!”

  For a moment, the room stuttered.

  For a moment, Oliver thought he saw something vast, stern, and alien sharing the same space as Lace. A visage disappointed and disapproving, distant and yet near…

  Then the gold watch peeled itself apart. Its gold plating rolled free of the tin shell in neat, little balls; the iron gears broke into tiny slivers; the tin sank into a fine sand. All of them flowed apart, forming neat piles atop the markings at the perimeter.

***

  Sebastian, angel of witness, watcher of the deeps, keeper of the ancient records, and mediocre servant, glanced up from the House Mishkan ledgers.

  Alisandra paused her writing. “What’s wrong?”

  They both sat in the Mishkan library, surrounded by the House finances.

  “Nothing, my dear. I think I will leave this last ledger to you.”

  “We’ve been at this for five days, and you bail at the end?!”

  “I may have left something in the oven. I won’t be long.”

  Alisandra sighed. “More like angel of laziness…”

***

  Reed examined a mote of gold between thumb and forefingers. Producing a knife, he tested the pellet. A flake of gold floated to the table. Humming, he dissected the mote until only flakes remained, and those he brushed apart, seeking signs of impurity.

  Next, he turned his attention to the iron and tin, scraping the fragments with the patience of a surgeon.

  Finally, the Guildsman snorted in acknowledgement. “Interesting. Does it work on people?”

  Lace crossed her arms beneath her bosom. “Dead ones.”

  Oliver grimaced. Why exactly does she know that?!

  “I can work with that.”

  Lace nodded. Giving him no chance to speak further, she spun and retreated under a cloud of royal disdain.

  This had the added benefit of hiding the blood stain slowly seeping down her collarbone and into her corset.

  In the ensuing silence, Reed leaned over to his lackey. “Find her price. Make sure she understands I expect results.”

  “Yes, sir.” The lackey followed Lace.

  The Guildsman flicked a gold note to the table, shot Oliver a warning glance, and departed.

  The young man sat alone in the ritual chamber for a moment, unsure of how to process this strange night. The phoenix wiggled weakly in his lap, and he automatically ran a reassuring finger down its plumage.

  Frivolous nobles and furtive priests. A Guildsmaster and his hound…

  The phoenix cooed gently in his lap, growing warmer.

  He rubbed its feathers, smiling. “You’re okay.”

  It grew even warmer.

  “Ah, that’s a bit much.”

  It began to sizzle through the tablecloth.

  Oliver swore. “Up you go!”

  He heaved it up and out of the cloth. It settled onto the table, talons smoking against the bare wood like a soldering iron. Peering sideways, it greeted Oliver with a pleasant chirp.

  “Sorry. I prefer the fire in my heart, not my pants.”

  It chirped once more, pulsed with a warm orange thanks, and fluttered through the curtains out of sight.

  “Does that make me a witch now?” Oliver mused.

  I expected more naked women and ritual sacrifice…

  Of course, he was alone in a rotted-out store, and no one answered. Shaking his head, he removed his stupid mask and stuffed it into a pocket. Maybe he could use it for a costume ball come Solace.

  He was in no mood to chase after Lace. Thus, there was no path but back outside.

  The empty, calm, dangerous streets brought back his tenement habits easily. He immediately shifted his gait into a swagger, the nonchalant confidence of someone on the way to greater places.

  Walk like you’re so important nobody would be stupid enough to mug you.

  With miles to walk, no wagons in sight, and no pocket knife, that swagger was his only defense.

  The Harvest wind brought the first hints of chill from the mountains, and the western horizon flashed with approaching lightning. A storm front swiftly approached.

  “Called it,” Oliver muttered.

  Which meant a hike through a downpour.

  Contemplating his options – a mugging or a dousing – he reached the first street corner. He strained for signs of gangsters and barely heard the street. Wagons were rare at this hour, easily heard, and no one would bring a car around these parts unless they wanted to–

  “Do you require a driver, Oliver Oshton?”

  The young man jumped, spun, and braced for a fight…

  But it was only Sebastian, that soft-voiced noble who had sent Edward packing for home. The noble leaned out the window of a black car, smooth and sleek and silent as death.

  Only one other car in the city ran that silent and smooth. One car where waited a woman in red.

  Have you ever wanted to be an Inventor?

  “It is an oddly quiet car, I suppose,” Sebastian agreed.

  Oliver shook his head. “What? I didn’t say anything.”

  “And yet I heard,” agreed the strange man, chuckling. “Your storm approaches. I feel obliged to offer you a ride. Consider it an apology for what you have been put through.”

  The youth refocused on the matter at hand. “How did you even know I was here?”

  “I did not. I came to this dour block investigating something else entirely. Quite a coincidence that I should find you at the site of two crimes. Are you not content to be an Inventor, Oliver?”

  Those grey eyes regarded him without judgement, witnessing every guilty twitch.

  Honestly, he would have preferred judgement.

  “I have projects that need to succeed,” Oliver defended, “and a patron who takes care of me. I won’t betray her, so don’t bother asking.”

  Though he could not quite remember why Mirielle inspired such devotion.

  It didn’t matter. He could save entire villages from starvation. He could conquer the skies! Wasn’t that vision worth any price to his honor?

  Sebastian wrinkled his nose faintly, but the target of his ire did not seem to be Oliver himself. Sighing, the strange man offered the passenger door. “You may tell Mirielle whatever you wish. She yet obeys the compact, and I will not be the one to raise war against her.”

  Oliver hesitated, considering his options. He could deal with rain; he could surrender his money to muggers. It would hardly be the first time.

  This man was kin to Mirielle. Another hidden god…

  Yet Sebastian didn’t know Donovan was coming. Even House Mishkan is fallible…

  Was he supposed to know these Mishkan faces? Why did he remember the taste of a midsummer meal at an estate he had never visited? Had he seen so much in Thea’s lab, or did his own memories jumble with something else?

  A whisper inside wanted very much to spite this strange servant. Did not Oliver possess knowledge beyond Sebastian’s petty sight? What had Gabriel Mishkan’s precious Conclave ever done for the farmer and the ditch digger?

  Ah, but it is my Conclave now, dear Gabriel…

  Oliver shook his head, straightening his mind. Was he really so petty? These thoughts reminded him too much of any number of drunk louts back home. They could name every slight from every House, but they couldn’t remember to pay a two-silver tab.

  For a better world…if I would consort with demons, why would I sneer at nobles?

  The whispering music had no retort to that.

  Oliver wanted to believe that Lace only knew a spell to peel apart a dead body as an exercise in theory, but even he wasn’t that naïve.

  “Have you ever heard of a woman who dreams of the great Redeeming?” he asked.

  A smile slowly bloomed across Sebastian’s face. “No, Oliver. I have not.”

  Odd for a man to be happy when informed of his own ignorance.

  “She seems to be in contact with Donovan.”

  “Would you be kind enough to share with me?”

  House Mishkan’s servant offered an open door.

  The first, fat raindrops hit the sidewalk.

  Oliver accepted the second most important ride of his life.