We had to lie. We couldn’t tell the world that because a single custodial nanite carelessly left in the bullet chamber we accidentally cut a pinhole in the dimensional veil. We created a multidimensional zettabyte data processor the size of a single AL atom. We poked God in the eye. Our pride made us lie. We were men of science and our greatest discovery was nothing more than pure careless dumb luck.
Exert: Multidimensional Binary, Programing in Infinite Space
The blade jerked as he drew it across the poor man’s throat. That inner voice in Victor’s head just kept repeating, I should have at least drew the blade across the whetstone. That little voice was very disappointed in Victor, it was one of those details that hours and days spent in the pig room drilled into you. The blood spurted from the assignment's neck as he gurgled and gagged for air. It was a messy kill not at all the fast and clean like the pigs. But it was his baptism. When an initiate in the Order transitioned to an acolyte mistakes were not only expected but were the norm. To pull a Death Writ on one's baptism was a true rarity among the fetches of the Reavery. In fact, in the three years, Victor had spent at the Spires he had never heard of another fetch pulling a Death Writ on his baptism. Maybe that was why Kenbasa was his Shadow tonight.
Victor was feeling quite full of himself. He had pulled a Death Writ his first time out of the gate. His Shadow was Kenbasa Akinjibe the Second Reaver, Grand Master of the Skulls Faction surely he had and lucky uncle watching over him. Even though it was not going as well as Victor would have hoped. He reached into his coat and pulled out two of the engineers' newest gadgets. A paper tube about eight inches long with a thick wax seal at one end. Gripping it tightly in one hand he slammed it wax down on the table crumbling the wax seal. Out fell a silver ring with an attached wire. Curling his finger through the ring and yanking hard. The plug on the wires other end scraped across the abrasive igniting the phosphor match. It sputtered and spewed red sparks and fire from the paper tube. Victor stabbed the match deep into the guy's throat like a burning sword. The coppery wet smell filled his mouth as the assignments blood boiled. The soft tissue of the body liquified adding fuel to the fire.
For good measure he lit a second match and threw it into the desk drawer as he left the apartment. That voice just kept nagging at him, this fire could kill hundreds. Victor knew that. This was an old building mostly wood not the stone structures of uptown. It might very well spread across the neighborhood. Lower New York was a tinderbox just waiting to be ignited, in more ways than one. The reaver resolved himself. He would alert the fire brigade when he was a few blocks away, that was the best he could do. The voice was relentless, was that really the best he could do? It had to be done. There had to be no evidence that was why they trained so hard. To cut deep enough to sever the arteries but shallow enough to not nick the bone. Hours and hours of training, squeal, squeal, squeal.
Kenbasa was waiting in the shadows as Victor bound out of the building a little bit to giddy. Kenbasa followed at a distance as the pair made their way north on Delancy. Victor paused by one of the new voice telegraph booths. The Capital enjoyed the benefits that technology offered so the new boxes were popping up across the city. The Imperial Ministry of Communications and Telegraph had designed all of them in the bright red, white and blue Imperial colors. He ducked inside the folding glass door lifted the receiver from its cradle. A snide proper voice spoke in his ear “Switchboard, where can I connect you?” Victor leaned in “Worth 4100 quickly.” The switching engineer pulled at her cables moving it from one plug to the next. “You are connected sir” The gruff scratchy voice on the other end yelled into Victor’s ear. “Whatcha got boyo?” It was all new no one really knew the edicate yet. Victor was brief, “Apartment fire on south Delancey!” He slammed the receiver onto the hook and disappeared into the darkness between the gas lights, his shadow in tow.
Kenbasa tried to discourage arrogance, pride was an attribute he encouraged even less. The boy had a knack for the vocation even if he lacked humility that had always been the hallmark of the Skulls. The Faction of Skulls was one of eight factions a reaver could join. Each had its purpose, each filled a niche in the reaver caste. It was the only one with such a dark singularity of purpose.While no faction discouraged assisinations or executions the Skulls were the exclusive faction for executing Death Writs. Legal documents of the Canon where by definition of process a person was slated for death. Many had met their deaths at the hand of an acolytes of the Order the vast majority at either a reaver’s knife or the shell from a rifle. Whether defending their lives or in the heat of a firefight lives are lost in the pursuit of a higher mission.
But a Death Writ was a special circumstance where the intended had neither threatened an acolyte nor had they threatened the Order. But they had committed heresy either by word, deed, thought or possession. A thousand years before the Order an idea in the minds of a small group of survivors huddle in the swampy ruins of the Capital. Even then the thought of purposeful murder was repugnant to the masses. But it was a repugnancy that had to be carried out. So the emerging leadership those that would be the first Council of Twenty-One scoured their acolytes for those with the constitution for such a grim vocation. To protect the future of mankind they harnassed monsters to their own ends. The Skulls were the second faction to be sanctioned its purpose was to carry out these repugnancies. An elaborate tribunal set forth to give validity to the process and so the Death Writ was birthed. The process created the killers recruited the Skulls were unleashed upon the world. Victor didn’t yet know it but tonight was less baptism and more audition.
Once they had traveled a few dozen blocks Kenbasa caught up to his protégé. Compared to the fairly average pasty form of Victor the Second struck and impressive frame. Weighing in at almost nineteen stone and six foot five he towered over the young man. The dark almond hue of his skin made him well suited to clinging in the shadows. He had forgone his leathers for the muted colors of a city suit complete with a bronze silk vest with a festive gold paisley print. Not his normal attire but he felt it more appropriate for tonight’s activities. Kenbasa had grown up in Afrikaan plains and the constrictive wools of Imperial fashion didn’t suit him at all.
Victor wore the traditional leathers of a reaver although the set he had were illfitted. The leathers and the knuckle knife were usually gifts to a reaver at their baptism. The wealthy parents oft sent their unlanded children to the Order to gain purpose seeing as they would inherit nothing. These sons and daughters were often gifted tailored leathers and well forged knives. But like Kenbasa, Victor had been born poor not entirely poor his father a member of the Stokers Guild. He worked deep within the stacks feeding coal to the burning maws of the furnaces that powered the Capital. He had no savings when he died. Victor was only ten and he watched his mother struggle to survive, washing clothes, tailoring for the poor and sometimes less savory jobs. Even if she were still alive she could not have afforded such an extravagant gift.
Kenbasa could feel that sting. To be left provebely naked as you watched your fellow fetches receive the tools of trade. Kenbasa had gifted Victor a set of leathers. They were way to big for the boy but as he amassed crowns he could have them tailored. The knuckle knife the Second gave him was old but of good quality. It had once belonged to the current Grand Reaver who had gifted it to Kenbasa in much the same circumstances. A short squat blade with the wire notch used to clip wire, the brushed brass knuckle guard had raise spikes. It was the knife of a warrior less the knife of an assassian. Kenbasa had suspected that Rameirez had fought in the first wars against the Collective, he had come from that part of the Isles and the dates were right but he never talked about it. The leathers and the knife were a good fit for the lad in a metaphorical sense.
It was long stride to the Spires and Kenbasa was trying everything he could to not let himself look winded. A fight that any second he was sure he was going to lose. He was never happier to see the five towers appear between the more shallow buildings. The Twins with their dark blue polished granite façade a welcome sight. The pair entered the Iron Gates making their way up the cannonade that connected the gates to the steps of the Library of the Two Lions. It was a magnificent path made of blue and white marble flanked on both sides by two rows of columns on either side. It accentuate the reverence of the Library to acolytes of the Order. Anyone who entered could not underestimate the power of the this place.
The lions had an almost idol like status among the acolytes. And although discouraged the most supertisious of acolytes left tributes, tiny trinkets, the occasional crown or pence. The east lion was on the way to the Reavery from the Cannonade it had a wear mark along its pedestal. The reavers and fetches would touch or rub their hand across it as they passed like a silent prayer. Victor was no different as he placed his hand on the pedestal and closed his eyes for a second. The Reavery was the odd child among the five towers that made up the complex of the Spires. Its flat black granite was so deep and dull it swallowed the light. The bulbous out crops and minarets that covered its skin seemingly unplanned or afterthoughts. Like the reavers that it housed it was built to represent disorder and chaos. It was a stark and dreary contrast to the soft cream tones of the Canon, or the bleach white of the Candle and even far removed from the bright blue stone of the Twins. The Reavery was the darkness that lived within everyone as the reavers were the darkness that lived within the Order.
Darkness sure but not tonight, Victor was almost skipping as he entered the heavy wooden door that marked the only visible entrance into the Great Hall. The Reavery was a tower at its heart and a hollow one at that. The various and multitude of levels that made up its strata were open in their center looking forever down to the semicircular heavy marble desk at the center of the ground floor. Behind the desk were the robe clad clerks of the Canon. Whether it was a punishment or a promotion the clerks spent there days processing the data, intelligence and most importantly the Death Writs. As of late their work was constant and consitent.
Victor beamed with pride as he approached the desk pressing his thumb deep into the blood bowl. The pointed metal at the bowl’s center poked the skin letting the bowl fill with blood. Victor pressed his bloody thumb to the bottom of the Writ then dipped the quill into the bowl. With a quick swish of the quill he signed his full name to the bottom of the page. The clerk pressed the seal into the remaining blood then stamped the Death Writ as he took it from the reaver’s hand. The clerk pursing his lips as he blew air across the document to speed up the process. Folding the now fully executed Writ once, twice neatly placing it in the bronze caddy before clipping it closed. Dropping into one of the many message tubes lining the cylindrical wall behind him. The Writ swooshed under the gardens to its final home in the depths of the Canon.
Deep in those depths Teesa was combing through the stacks and stacks of census data that poured in from embassies around the world. No one ever questioned why the Order took such great interest in the births, deaths and marriages the sheer volume of the work precluded curiosity. But to Teesa who had spent literally her whole life within these walls this tedious pecking was what brought her comfort. Her parents had dropped her off as an infant on the steps of a judiciary on the edges of the Zahara. The stoic magistrate inside had taken her as a ward. Thought few magistrates married even fewer had children Edwin Goth saw Teesa as his daughter. A daughter in every meaningful meaning of the word. He had taken her with him as he circumnavigated the world on his climb to the office of Prime Law the highest an acolyte of the Canon Law could obtain without becoming the Grand Historian. Some whispered he would one day soon rise to that office as well. The current Historian was very old and rumored to have one foot in the grave. Edwin hoped not. Pierre St.Cyr Beniot had been not just his superior but his friend for over five decades ever since they had first met at the embassy on the island of Alsace-Lorraine.
Teesa had literally been born to the vocation of Canon Law. Her father had immersed her in the law since the day she arrived on his doorstep. Her bedtime stories didn’t revolve around pigs and little girls but around the details of what the Libriam Humana dictated was heresy. She had studied mediation before age twelve learning to ajudicate petty squabbles. Magistrates often were the only courts available to the citizens of the world. Kings and grand families paid little heed to the legal disputes between their lessers. But it was in the ledgers, tally books and the words and numbers they contained that Teesa had found joy. When other young women took up their Saturday night carousing with young men in the pub, Teesa preferred to curl up on the couch with a good wine and by gaslight read riveting books like “The Geneological Record of the Imperial bloodline and its affiliated families.” She took the post of archivist when he and her father first came to the Canon not as a punishment but as attaining a dream.
There were many sublevels to the Canon. From the archiving vault to the deepest depths of dusty shelves where the most ancient of documents resided. The archiving vault was part sorting room and part storage for the master ledgers. The inscribed gold lettering on the white marble walls gave hints as to why the Order intruded so much in the lives of average citizens, “Bloodlines Matter” Teesa was diligent in that mantra. She was an archivist and one of great diligence. She didn’t ask why the details mattered, only that they did. She sat at one of the many desks fingers quickly comparing the family records to the master ledger. Around her archivists cataloged the bits of paper that tubed into the room from the far reaches of the Empire and beyond. Some documents by law must be read out loud as they arrived in the room. On a busy day it was a caucophany of voices each trying to out shout the other. Today was the time of month that most archivist dreaded but Teesa reveled in, it was audit day.
Oh the dread audit, a pro forma necessity for keeping the records clean and precise. The Canon Archivist would pull ledgers at random assigning them to an archivist to verifiy. The ledgers came from the archives, the sublevels layered in shelves and vaults that seemed an endless pit below the Canon. They detailed the births, marriages and deaths of every citizen the Order for which the Order could account. Most became notations and documents stored for eternity. Some however corresponded to bloodlines the of which the Order to particular interest. Teesa didn’t know why, it wasn’t the bloodlines of kings and emporers or noble families. Of course the Order did keep those as well which had settle several lines of succession over the centuries. No the vast majority of the bloodlines were those of the most ordinary citizens. Barbers and bakers, blacksmiths and farmers all indexed in the Master Ledgers.
These Master Ledgers store in armored and locked cabinets accessible to only the Canon Archivist. The Masters contained the illuminated trees of the bloodlines they record. Each branch and leaf only an alphanumeric index for the location and page number of the corresponding personal ledger. This is what the audit was for and the meat and potatoes of Teesa’s expertise. She had shown herself quite adept at the tedious and sometimes mind numbing effort to keep the archives clean and correct. She rarely took notice of what she audited. She ran her fingers from ledger to ledger verifying that the documents referenced in the Master did indeed match the ledger where it said it could be found. Today should have been no different than any of the hundreds of audits she had performed since arriving at the Spires with Edwin five years ago. It should have been but the fates interceded. A lonely brass caddy shot free of its message tube landing in the basket. The next archivist pulled its contents and like Canon Law required read the Writ out loud. It was a simple act to read aloud the index, the assignment, the Justicar that issued the Writ, and the magistrates that counter signed and to complete the ritual the reaver that dispatched the Writ.
It was the name, the reavers name that caught her attention. The name had no portents one of the thousands of thousands of reavers that having dispatched thousands of thousands of Writs. Teesa let her fingers search for the source of her déjà vu. The Master Ledger before her the source of today’s audit was a dead bloodline. Teesa had taken note of the black ribbons used to tie the ledger. Black ribbons denoted that the Archivist had determined through exhaustive effort that this bloodline was indeed dead. No more progeny could be identified that each branch, each leaf terminated without producing offspring. She furiously turned the pages she knew her fingers had heard that name. She repeated it in her mind “Victor Ibrihim Ravchinko.”
There it was the very bitter end of the bloodline. A single pair of leaves resting the bottom corner of the last page. Rachel Ibrihim age forty married to Victor Pasha Ravchinko also age forty. It could have been coinicedence the random coalescing of letters but the odds were against it. A woman whose bloodline hails from the near east the furthest reaches of the Isles. A man possibly originating from among the Moscovites. Even in the Empire the mixing of the two cultures almost never took place. The Ravchinko line was of little note, this was the only entry Teesa could find in any of the Master Ledgers she had seen. But the Ledger before her detailed almost a thousand years of the Ibrihims. Rachel was the last of the them, the line had died when she passed almost five year ago, and yet.
She put her finger on the branch. The entry in the Master Ledger, husband and wife the alphanumeric index leading her to the pages of the personal ledger. There they were the birth the marriage and death of Rachel Ibrihim. Maybe she had never audited this ledger, maybe she had just paid it no heed. It was unlike Teesa to miss such a glaring clue. The embossed seal of the Order in the corner of the death notice. That meant a doctor, an acolyte had certified the woman’s passing. Below the seal another index the coding that directed one to the seven part folder that detailed her service to the Order.
Teesa ran down the stairs level after level to the Vault of Heros. The place where service records of all the Order’s acolytes was stored. A cloud of dust rose as Teesa pulled the folder from its shelf. The seven part folder neatly tied with black ribbon, sealed with wax at the knot. Black ribbon, this woman was a reaver or had been and a Skull at that. Reavers were superstitious they sealed their dead with wax. It was an almost magic spell if one believed in that sort of thing. A seal to keep the horrid deeds of the dead from coming back to haunt the living. You needed permission from the Reavery to break the seal, but Teesa’s curiosity was stronger today. The crumbs of the skull embossed wax fell to the granite floor as she tore open the folder. She had indeed been a reaver of the Skull. Her death notice was the last entry before that it went back sixteen years. She had excommunicated herself the white paper only said she obsconded in the middle of the night disappearing into the city. If a reaver want to lose themselves they would stay lost.
The oddity of the names continued now it was too many to be mere coincidence. The white paper report, the investigation of her dissapperance filled out in due diligence by the Faction Ordinator of the Black Water. That would have been enough to peak suspicion Ordinators just didn’t investigate such common occurrences. Acolytes absconded all the time. The life was not for everyone, the stress oft pushed one the tattered edges. But rarely did Ordinators take such an interest in the mundane. Teesa read the report to the very end, unimpressive and uninformative signature at the bottom however was very informative, “Pater Ravchinko Ordinator Faction of the Black Water. A lightning bolt from the sky why such a conspiracy? What could have been worth hiding the loss of a single reaver. It was dark in the vault only a few feint gas lamps lit the entirety of the room. But enough light to see the ammendmant to the report. Written in faded lead in the margin, the same handwriting as the original, “A child born in Brooklyn.”
If this was true why would you go to such extent to cover it up and then torpedo your own conspiracy. Twenty two years ago a woman of a bloodline that the Order saw as so important that they kept the Master Ledger under the lock and key of the Canon Archivist disappeared herself. In doing so the bloodline was declared dead. Now a note left by a mystery archivist shows the bloodline is not only not dead but alive and well. Alive and well inside the very walls that this woman worked so hard to leave behind. Teesa could hypothesize but the facts are as such twenty two years ago she fled in secret and now a twenty two year old living offspring was a reaver. Victor Ibrihim Ravchinko could not be disappeared from the ashes of her pyre. There was no proof this was their child. But as her nanny who had grown up in the Battery would have said “If it has a beak and feathers and sitting on an egg you don’t need to fry it to know it’s chicken.” Teesa gathered up all the paper, ledgers and folders to take it to the Archivist.
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The Canon Archivist a dottering old man that had been at his station for fifty years. He was short squat with sparse grey hair on his head but a big bushy grey beard. His grey wool suit and matching vest though well tailored was of a style the Capital had not seen in decades. Teesa had once heard the Archivist call this place the oubliette. A place the leadership of the Canon had religated him to be forgotten. It wasn’t a punishment per se but it wasn’t a reward. A place you put the acolytes that are good enough to be of the Order but not good enough to swim among the sharks. So for decades he had silently carried out his duties here in the basement. Put here in their little place of forgetting.
But even under the circumstances he had carried out his duties with diligence and accuracy. Constantly striving to improve upon the methods and practices used. Teesa rushed up the stair and to the old man’s desk causing the geriatric manager to startle out of the his daily daze. She threw down the ledgers and papers and quickly darted her fingers back and forth jabbering to quick for the old man to understand. The Archivist slammed his fists down on the heavy wood putting an end to her excitement. “Now Teesa if you could? Please start from the beginning and try and explain whatever it is you are trying to explain.” Teesa took in a lung full of air and exhaled deeply. She related the string of clues as they had been revealed to her. She watched as the old mans face turned from a beaten broken old magistrate to the bright and brilliant smile of his youth.
The Archivist flipped the to the cover of the Master Ledger they were so excited about. On the cover embossed in gold leaf “Pater Familias” the Archivist mood changed drastically. He fumbled through his desk looking for something almost at the level of panic. Finding a faded form that looked as if it had not been needed since the Archivist had begun his tenure. His hand trembled as he filled out the form. Stopping and cussing outloud that he was using blue ink instead of black. He started again throwing the first paper in the refuse basket. As he scribbled Teesa reached into the trash to retrieve the form. “Request to the Council of Twenty-One for Revocation of a Bloodline” Teesa had never seen the form before but understood what it meant. The old man was requesting that the Order collect and preserve an entire bloodline. Capturing a human being well it wasn’t that far fetched they had dispatched thousands in the name of preventing heresy. This boy wasn’t a threat he was actually about the business of the Order. What did revocation of living person look like, a prison?
While she was deep in thought the Archivist had waddled over to the bank of message tubes on the wall. He pulled on the gold chain in his vest pocket fishing out a set of keys on the other end. As he was unlocking the message tube that traveled straight to the Historians desk she had all but made up her mind. The completed form would have to travel the length of the Old Garden and up twenty-one floors to reach the Historian’s desk, Teesa had precious little time. She had no idea what she was doing. It made no sense she had followed Canon Law. It was more religion than vocation. But this time, this boy it all seemed wrong. She didn’t know the girl that was skulking her way through the service tunnel between the Canon and the Reavery.
Today was a high and Victor was riding it hard. He had thought about taking the crowns now jingling in his pocket down to the waterfront and indulging himself, but decided to enjoy his new bunk instead. It wasn’t the luxury of say the Grand Reavers penthouse but it was much nicer than the fetch’s bunkhouse where he spent the last two years. The quint wasn’t a bad setup either. Five rooms each with two reavers centered around what anyone would consider a modest common room complete with bar and a lauder. Kenbasa had taken him to his apartment on the twelfth floor showed him the private stair up to the Grand Reaver’s suite to impress upon him the rewards of loyal service. Victor had fingered a nice bottle of fifty year old scotch, he was always good at the bells. Its not that he didn’t value Kenbasa’s generosity but old habits died hard. Now laying on his bunk enjoying the spoils of his day the only thing that could possibly make it better was a company. If the Shiloh could see him now. She lived next to him growing up. She looked down her nose at him the irony is they lived in pretty much the same situation. Boy if she could see him now.
It had to be a dream, the voice in his head kept telling him it wasn’t but Victor knew he wasn’t that lucky. Standing in his door in the middle of the night a beautiful girl. Brown curls cascading down to her shoulders framing the cutest caramel face sprinkled with freckles. Even the blue and white robes of a magistrate couldn’t hide what Victor thought must be a voluptuous body. He jumped from the bunk hyperattentive pouring on the only charm he had at his disposal. “How can I help you?” The sentence poured from his lips slow and drawn like pouring honey. He didn’t have the polished refined charms of a wellborn he had only jagged edge of street charisma. He waved his arm in a long arc welcoming her into his room.
This was not what Teesa was expecting, she didn’t know what she was expecting. Whatever it was this was not it. The boy before her was not the glorious remains of an all important bloodline. No he was no different than the myriad of other reavers she had encountered. Rough, harsh with the stench of danger wafting off of them. The Order was not a cliché they actually target recruited to fill their ranks with acolytes that fit the need. He was welcoming her in and she felt very uneasy about the invitation. But no she was determined something deep deep down in the dark reaches of her mind was spurring her on, this was the right thing to do. She entered Victor’s room checking the quint to make sure she was not seen. She was sure the Order would be sending someone to take Victor into revocation. She couldn’t have that the boy before her was not a heretic he was barely a man. “We have to leave, and we have to leave now. You don’t know me but you have to trust me, you are in grave danger.”
That wasn’t what Victor was expecting. A beautiful girl shows up in his door in the middle of the night begging her to go with her. It sounded like one of those trashy ten pence novels at the newsstand. He had the best baptism of any of the other fetches in his fold. There was no way he was giving that up for some girl no matter how beautiful she happened to be. The fantasy he saw in his doorway was turning into a nightmare. He grabbed at Teesa trying to force her back out the door. She was only nine stone nowhere near the strength to fight him off but not for lack of trying. Grabbing for anything solid to grasp this girl didn’t want to go. During the struggle she was reaching into the folds of her robes thrusting something into Victor’s face. His curiosity was more powerful than his need to get rid of this girl. The voice stopped him, give her a chance.
Pulling back he let her go as she rubbed her shoulder. “Ok, you got one minute to explain.” That was good because she was sure that was all they had. She pulled out the page she had ripped from the ledger. The one with his mother and father and the note in the margin. He read it and tightened his chest no since in the beautiful girl seeing him cry. His mother died five years ago but the wound was still fresh. She put her finger on the note “A child born in Brooklyn.” She pursed her lips not sure what to say but said it anyway. “Why would your mother want your birth kept secret? Why did she leave the Order? And your file says nothing about your uncle being The Black Water.” Victor smirked waving his arms about this was all too much. He pulled from the bottle then pulled again.
“I have no idea what you're on about. My mother was a…well a mother. She stayed at home, she baked soda bread and candied pecans. She wasn’t an acolyte and I have no uncle.” Now Teesa was just as confused. Rachel had hidden as much from her son as she had from the Order. Teesa ran to the window hoping not to see what she saw. A patrol of Mud Footers marching toward the Reavery, anybody but them. In the first days of the Empire and the Capital Rex Imperious Fredrick Michael Morgan gave the founders of the Order the Library and the land around it as a reward for their support in his war against the Burners. The catch the land was a swamp filled with sabrecats, cannibals, and the remnants of the hardcore Burners that had survived. Volunteer riflemen waded in to clear their Order’s newfound entitlement and all its levels. The mud was so thick and oily it pulled the boots from their feet. Day after day those brave men continued to fight boots or no boots after weeks of fighting they won the day. The first Historian gave them and their spiritual descendants the right and mantle to guard the Library of the Two Lions and all the knowledge and heresies within it. Now the Mud Footers were coming for Victor.
She couldn’t wait for him to make up his mind. She grabbed a side pack and through in his leathers and his sidearm then stuffed it with various clothing items she found in his footlocker. He was still trying to come to terms with whatever this was. Teesa grabbed his hand and pulled him out the door. In the hall, he pulled back “Not that way there may be one way in but dozens of ways out.” Victor ran to the end of a dead hallway Teesa in tow. Pushing on a statue of Henri Olean one of the first reavers the wall behind gave way to a spiral staircase leading down. Victor had spent years conditioning his body but even just four floors were getting to Teesa. At the bottom in a small room that seemed to have no stairs. Teesa was wheezing hard trying to catch her breath. She inhaled enough “Now what do we do?”
Victor smiled it was like he was enjoying this way too much. He pushed against the blind wall pushing the marble surface into the bush green of what Teesa assumed was the Old Garden. The Old Garden was all that was left of the original swamp that once stood behind the Two Lions. Groomed and sheared over the last millennia it was now a magnificent green space of controlled wildness. It ringed the Marches a three hundred-foot square of tightly shorn grass with granite walkways crisscrossing the green at the base of the Candle. The door had opened behind two or three twenty-foot tall Camillia bushes in the corner of where the Reavery met the high walls of the Spires. The boy stuck his head out and so he could see beyond the pecan trees to the Marches. The riflemen didn’t patrol the semi-wild space of the Old Garden but they marched back and forth across the Marches, hence its name. They crouched in the underbrush until the guard passed then darted for the Cannonade. Darting in and out from behind the columns turning the corner toward the gate. The Twins casting long shadows making it easier to hide. Teesa grabbed at Victor's arm pulling him into the shadow and whispering. “How do we get past the guards at the gate?”
Again that boyish smile, that kid playing seek and hide among the trash and debris of the slums where he had grown up. He pulled her off the path to the base of the western Twin pressing up against the polished blue granite behind the bushes. She couldn’t tell but it sounded like he was counting to himself. Running his fingers along the seems of the large granite sheets that made up the façade of the tower. He stopped abruptly falling to his knees in the bush clearing the leaves and debris with his hands. They're hiding under the bush was metal grate chained shut with a heavy padlock. Victor pulled a leather pouch from one of the pockets on his shoulder pack. With two slivers of steel, he twisted and turned until the lock popped open. Victor carefully pulled the chain from between the two handles being extremely careful to let it not jingle or clank against the metal grating. The grating made a squealing noise as Victor slowly lifted it. He stopped several times to ensure it hadn’t alerted anyone.
The reaver dropped into the ground first then caught Teesa as she fearfully followed him. “Welcome to the Imperial sewers magistrate. I’ve been using them to sneak out and go to the pubs during my apprenticeship.” The dark opaque stream at its center of the cylindrical passage had the stench of urine and feces. Rats darted down the narrow passage on either side of the flowing water. Victor reached into his pack and pulled out a self-lighting safety lantern. He pulled back and released the ignitor. A few snaps and crackles and bright light streamed through the ringed glass lens. Now Teesa could see images chalked into the stone walls. Below the grating from where they just escaped was a circle with five points sticking up. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the pictographs the reavers used to navigate the sewer.
It was disorienting without the sky above or landmarks to navigate as Victor led her down the passages. Victor moved like he knew where to go. Some of the pictographs made sense others made little or no sense to the magistrate. But Victor was having no trouble as the walk gave way to a trot. They passed many side passages and ladders leading back to the surface but Victor kept going. Teesa didn’t know how far they went in the darkness two maybe three hundred yards before stopping at yet another ladder. A burning rose etched on the wall in white chalk. Victor climbed the ladder and slowly opened the trap door at the top. The sewer filled with the dull orange gaslight from the room above.
Victor closes the hatch behind them. It was a large basement filled with beer kegs and an entire wall of bottled wine. “We will be safe here till we can figure this out. Maybe you could explain to me just what this is. Meanwhile, we can have a drink.” He pulled two mugs from a set of hooks in the ceiling and filled them. He wondered about the shelves and returned with salted meat, cheese, and bread. He treated the whole of the place like he owned it. Teesa was startled by the sound of a door opening at the top of the stairs in the corner. Footsteps descended the creaky wooden stairs but Victor didn’t move. A middle-aged woman with dark skin and curly hair stood on the landing with her hands on her hips. In a thick Mejican accent “And what have you done now? You know I am not your mother. Oh, I hope to the gods this young lady is not in trouble.”
Victor just smiled and chuckled under his breath. Cathlina Ortiz had a mysterious past. It was obvious she was not Imperial or at least hadn’t always been. Such proximity to the Kingdom of Mejico there were many refugees from the Holy Kingdom but that had been decades ago. The refugees from centuries ago had the telltale traits of the Mejicans but spoke, acted, and thought as Imperials now. Cathlina was much less removed from the island nation. Teesa thought it best in the current situation to not ask too many questions. Victor explained what he could and let Teesa fill in the blanks. It worked out well since Victor wanted to hear the whole story as well.
It became very interesting when Teesa brought up the Black Water. Someone Cathlina knew or had known. She loosened her tongue slightly and told some of her stories. Not enough that they truly understood but enough to know that she had been forced to flee the Kingdom. She had done that with the help of a Captain Ravchinko, otherwise known as the Black Water. At the time she knew very little about the Order. She had heard stories and had even met a few acolytes but did not know the details. Now she ran the Flower and the Flame the oldest pub in the Capital living in the room on the fourth floor. The towering flame of the Candle shown down on her street and the massive blue stone of the Twins marked its termination. The acolytes filled her pub and a young fetch had latched onto her like she was his mother. She had to help him, he was the only family she had.
Even close to three in the morning the pub was full. Cathlina snuck the two up the back stair to her apartment. Teesa could see the pub brimming with all the various departments of the Spires, reavers and magistrates, riflemen, and historians. The irony wasn’t lost on her, Victor had run away from the Spires to escape the Order only to hide right under their feet. The Flower and Flame had been built on the ruins of the old city. When civilization returned to the shores the Imperials found blue and yellow flowers growing from the ashen wreckage of what it had once been. Not surprising to anyone who knew the Empire a pub had been one of the first new buildings to be built over the old. It had been renovated several times over the centuries but the current iteration was at least two hundred years old. The walls encased in stained hardwoods, the floors were stone and the ceiling was pressed metal, she was a grand old lady. Being in midtown it hadn’t quite caught up with the wealthier neighborhoods it still had the gas lights instead of the new fad of galvanic lighting.
Cathlina’s apartment had the lived-in look but lacked the knick-knacks and accumulated possessions of a long life lived. The items and remembrances of moments in a person life that all sentimental people collected over their lifetime. She had been in the Capital for almost ten years and had collected none of those memories. Victor, familiar with her home was digging in the pantry for whatever odds and ends he could find. He plopped down at the simple wooden table with several jars and a loaf of bread. He spread pecan butter on one piece of bread and blackberry preserves on another then slapped them together. Teesa wrinkled her nose and shook her head when he offered the sandwich to her. She had never developed a palate for the thick woodsy flavor of pecan butter that so many Imperials in the Capital considered a staple.
The Cathlina returned from the bedroom with several dresses for Teesa. They were not extravagant just simple traveling clothes wool knits and simple white ruffled shirts. The shoes, not much different soft leather lace-ups that stopped mid-calf. The barmaid had been on the run and had brought up the point that Teesa would stick out with the long blue and white robes of a magistrate. While Victor was sucking down on his second sandwich Teesa excused herself to the bedroom to change clothes. She had never worn civilian clothes. The few times she left the various compounds she had called home it was in Edwin’s company or the service of the Order. It just never seemed necessary to have an entire set of clothing for such little use. She fanned through the outfits until she found one that suited her. A grey tweed with matching waistcoat. The shirt was frilly for her taste and the corset was tighter than the simple one she wore under her robe but she supposed she would have to adapt.
She emerged from the bedroom to find Cathlina was gone and Victor was filling what she could only assume was his fourth or fifth mug of beer. “We have a plan not much of plan but a plan none the less. Aunt Caty is popped out to buy us two tickets on the next thing smoking. She thinks that if we are going to find this uncle I knew nothing about, the port of Chikago is the best place to start looking. We find the Black Water he covered me up before maybe he would be willing to do it again. Besides he is the only person left alive that can tell us why they covered up my birth, to begin with.” Teesa pursed her lips and nodded. It was as good a plan as she had come up with, hers was grabbing a reaver and running. The railengine would get them there by noon if they left soon. It would give them a slight head start but Order was everywhere, it was kind of their purpose. Caty burst through the door holding the railengine vouchers in her hand. She rushed them out the door the railengine was leaving in thirty minutes and Central Station was several blocks away.
Central Station like the Library and the Empire Building had more or less survived the Burning. Rex Imperious Fredrick Michael Morgan had liberated the station after a furious fight with the burners that had made it their fortress. As a reward to his magnificence, he erected a twenty-foot mounted bronze statue of himself in the central gallery. The hooves of his black steed Raptor pointed the way to the stairs leading down to the platforms. They wouldn’t have time to exchange the vouchers for tickets they would just have to do it once they were on board.
Teesa read the voucher aloud “Platform C track 6 just down there.” The platforms were thick with smoke. Most of the railengines still ran by steam. Only the wealthy and Emperor could afford to refit the engines to fuel oil. As they approached the track they saw it. The Zephyr had been a troop engine during the reign of Rex Imperious James Thomas Morgan. The Great Bear had no use for frivolity or gilded grandeur he preferred the gore of battle over the glint of gold. But now that his son Rex Imperious James Joseph had ascended the throne the Zephyr had been refitted to the current grandeur in front of the pair.
It was a simple car in the merchant section not fancy but still comfortable. The conductor walked along with the engine checking tickets and securing the doors. Victor was within his element. Teesa was not as comfortable with the cloak and dagger games that reavers play. She tried to get comfortable but the nervous energy just wouldn’t let her go. Victor took off his fedora and dropped it down over his face. He leaned way back on the bench and within minutes was fast asleep. Teesa bounced her knee up and down to try and consume the stress balled up inside her.
Victor was jolted awake his head was throbbing and he felt tremendous heat. His eyes were blurry and he rubbed them furiously to try and clear them. A muffled scream somewhere in the distance like shouting from a distant mountain. Pain in every muscle every bone made worse by someone tugging at his arm. The dark blur slowly turned to a dimly lit blur that now faded into the night sky haloed in amber above him a soot cover Teesa staring down at him. He was on his back looking up he could feel the wet ground behind him. The excruciating pain coursing through his whole body as he let her pull him up. Around him the mangled wreckage of the Zephyr. He could hear shells plinking off metal somewhere in the direction of the engine. Several detonations sending columns of fire and smoke into the air. All the sounds like listening through a cotton pillow. Teesa urging him forward. Victor shook his head violently as if that would clear the cobwebs. The ringing subsided from a suicide-inducing tone to a more just annoying level. The muffled buzz of Teesa’s voice became more audible. “WE HAVE TO RUN. THEY ARE COMING BACK. VICTOR FOR GOD's SAKE RUN!”
Teesa pulled at his arm running for the tree line. Pushing through the thick underbrush that pushed back against them. Victor couldn’t see the phantom vapors that were supposedly nipping at his heels. He had to once again put all his faith in a girl he knew nothing about. Whether the heat of the moment or his innate curiosity or the voice in the distance of his mind urging him ever forward. The burning hull of the railengine the only light to guide them on a moonless night a challenge in itself the pair pushed forward. Pushing into a dangerous wood fleeing danger and darkness ahead of them making it even more dangerous. Without even realizing the true danger were the eyes of the shadowy figure bearing witness to their flight. The shadow slipped in quietly behind them his steps masked by theirs.