“Sylvaine,” the malva said, as she stepped onto the engine. It was not quite a question, but Sylvaine nodded anyways.
“You are?”
“Rostialva. We’re partners,” the woman said. She was a continental malva, that was clear from her ear and nose piercings, as well as the abstract tattoos on her cheek, all of which would be scandalous for the more common seafaring Malva of the Thalassocracy. Her hair shined in the sunlight, shimmering copper, as if thin metal shavings had been welded to her scalp.
“Where’s Javad?” Sylvaine asked.
“Where’s Javad?” Rostialva repeated, with a more than a dash of mockery. “Where’s my partner as well? Rusted pus if I know. Rusted pus if I care. Let’s get started.”
Sylvaine started to unscrew the most worn of the panels. After replacing her third, she noticed a lack of something.
“You planning on helping?” she asked.
Rostialva leaned on the curved wall. “Well, I figured since I have the luck of being teamed with an engineer with no Knack, you might as well handle the practical stuff, since I’ll be doing double the æthermantics.”
“The only æthermantics involved is fusing a few æther circuits in the back.”
Rostialva opened her arms wide. “Well if you want to handle half of those, I’ll help you with these. No? Then I’m on my smoke break.”
Sylvaine tried to stare her down, but the woman already had a clope in her lips. She considering arguing the point, but could tell when someone had chosen not to budge. The argument could go all the way to their employer, but even in Icaria a ferral’s side of the story was never the preferred one.
She worked for the greater part of an hour; as she would have alone, only with the additional misery of the stares of her partner, and her occasional, a bit too loud, mumble. As Sylvaine finished putting all into place, Rostialva walked over, snapped a spark into fresh circuitry, and then lit another clope, as Sylvaine started the inverse of her previous hour’s work.
After she replaced the last panel Sylvaine walked past Rostialva.
“I’ll request a new partner,” she said.
The malva smiled. “Oh no, woe to me.”
* * *
Trying to filter her fumes lest they condense into a cloud of rage, Sylvaine walked through Icaria, her anger now polluted with the fatalistic dread of her upcoming workshop session. It would be further embarrassment to come into workshop in a near rage, so she tried to distract herself with the hour she had free. She turned by Zev Airclank Square, and headed towards The Cogcrafter’s Lunch, a small café in which she had sometimes grabbed croissants with Javad after work.
She wandered through a main thoroughfare and past a crowd of Kaimark tourists, who gawked at the golem workmen, metal-morphing street-performers, and the uncountable variety of mechanical marvels that that become the prosaic decorations of Sylvaine’s everyday commute. One child, still wearing his Principate militaresque school uniform (apparently out of pure habit) stared at Sylvaine with wide eyes, pulling on his mother’s sleeve. Sylvaine was in no mood for a crowd of, at best, gawks, and quite likely sneers, and so took a quick turn down a side alley. A few dozen metres in she realized her mistake.
She glanced back and found that same bald man who had accosted her outside Lazarus’s apartment, standing only three paces behind her. He smiled as if he hadn’t been sneaking up behind her. If she weren’t so unnerved she’d be impressed that a man of that size could walk with such stealth.
“Hello,” he said, “I was wondering if…”
“No,” she said. “I can’t get you Gearswit.”
“It is of great importance, I gave him…”
She continued walking. With all the miseries of life, she didn’t need a half-mad stalker as well. The man followed.
“Please, just a moment of your time.”
She ignored him, taking a turn down a further sub-alley. The buildings here rose high, their doors back entrances to apartment complexes and first-floor shops. At a glance all looked locked. If she had the Knack, those locks would be formalities, but for now there was another block of narrow dim and another intersection before she could slip out back into the crowded sunlight. She focused her gaze forward and tried to ignore the petitions of the man.
Unfortunately, the crackpot would not allow himself to be so peacefully ignored. He dashed forward with such silent speed that Sylvaine didn’t realized he had moved until he was right beside her.
“This is too important,” he hissed. “I am sorry, but I must speak with you.”
Sylvaine leapt back, and then ran down the alley as fast as her feet could carry.
“Wait!” the man shouted. He didn’t wait himself, but sprinted after her with equal rapidity. She held her bag close and put workshoe to pavement. She resisted the urge to get down on all fours and bound forward with every limb, despite the adrenaline pounding her deepest instincts awake.
She turned the corner with a skid, and found the expected open street blocked, a rectangular extension of the tenement complex to her right pushing out to cover the street.
Sylvaine froze. She had taken this shortcut just a week ago, but Icaria was a city of engineers. When construction required only a flick of the hand, every odd structure became protean.
There was another way, behind her, but as she turned she saw the man blocking her path, the hustle of the street a distance behind him.
“Stay back,” Sylvaine said.
The man stepped forward, his words a fierce whisper. “I understand why you run, but you’re in danger. He will only use—”
“Stay the fuck back!” Sylvaine hissed. She glanced around with a frantic fear. There were pipes near the man’s feet, it would take only a small spark of æthermantics to burst them, distract the man with steam or knock him to the ground under river of sewage. For any of the engineers in this city this would be a simple, dignified, escape.
Her heart pounded against its cage of bone, her visions sharpened, her nose took in every scent. Her ears twitched with inhuman precision, she could hear the man’s sweat hit the metal floor, hear his hands rubbing against his bracelet, yet she couldn’t make out any coherent meaning out of the words the man was speaking.
Sylvaine could escape, something inside her was sure of it. Fight then flight. A roar, a slash, a dash out, safe on the far street, with clothes ragged, fur on end, and blood decorating her claws. But how humiliating that would be, the ferral finally going berserk. It was a horror she had seen in many a cinegraph show, vile monsters that hunted the heroes, half-naked ferrals hunched over like animals, with wild eyes and stained fangs.
She sucked in her breath; trying to count her heartbeat, to calculate the distance that separated the man from herself, anything to bring back her mind into the realm of the sane and quantifiable. Whatever that man might try to do, could it possible worse than becoming that? A beast with no thought but survival?
His every step forward, his formless words, his outstretched hand, each pushed her instincts up, and up, through her shaking body, to her brain, where fear battled against reason.
A shout. Her pursuer paused and turned. Shapes in the distance, silhouetted by sunlight, all man sized, alike in color. It took her a moment to quite focus her mind and realize the shout had been “freeze!”, the men police.
“That’s him, that’s the bastard!” A familiar voice, another man. Lazarus, she realized, standing besides the cops.
The line of the police stepped forward. The bald man raised his arms. Then he let out a whisper, which, despite her now focused sobriety, she still couldn’t understand. In the span of a second the bracelet of the man reforged itself into a long blade, and as it did so the man jumped to the left, the fresh blade slicing through a metal door. He disappeared into the shadow-strewn hallway beyond.
“Shit!” shouted one of the cops, and a trio of them dashed forward into the building. Lazarus Roache ran up with them, coat flapping, but
stopped as he reached Sylvaine.
“Sylvaine!” he said. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, slowing her panting. She glanced down and was glad to see that her clothes were not excessively messed, and that her hair was still mostly in place. “Yes, I’m all right.”
“I know that man,” Lazarus jabbed his finger, “A real piece of work. When I noticed him following you into that alleyway, well, I’m glad police were nearby is all I can say.”
Sylvaine tried to gather her words together, thoughts now slowing back into a sensible pace. She managed a “thank you.”
The man smiled, teeth gleaming even in the shaded alleyway. “Come, let’s get you somewhere more pleasant.”
* * *
Lazarus led Sylvaine to The Cogcrafter’s Lunch. He grinned and asked if she had ever been, and she nodded as he ordered chocolate croissants and tea. A woman played a bandonion by the passing crowds, a couple exchanged laughs a table over, and Lazarus spent a moment to banter freely with the waiter. It was strange how quickly calm returned sitting alongside Lazarus. The police were still only a few blocks away, but here, resting on a faux-rattan chair, basking in the aroma of rising bread, it all seemed to her a past life.
“Has that man been bothering you?” Lazarus asked as the waiter left, concern etched on his forehead.
Sylvaine shook her head. “Not much. I mean, I ran into him once before.”
“Before,” he asked. “You talked with him?”
“No, no!” Sylvaine said, with some embarrassment. “It was obvious enough to me the man was crazy, but he wasn’t so disturbingly persistent.”
“He’s a creep, scum,” Lazarus said, taking a nibble from his pastry, “but don’t worry, Icaria’s finest are on him.”
“He had a strange weapon,” she said, “Did you see it? That bracelet-sword. It looked like some pre-homid autochthon machine.”
“A what?” Lazarus paused. “Oh, one of the… what does the Church call them, the Ascended. One of their artifacts. Forgive my illiteracy in the proper terminology. I can assure you I am no churchgoer, no, too sharp for that. Not as sharp as you, I suppose, at least not as well educated. I obviously have much to learn from engineers like yourself.” He chuckled, and Sylvaine felt herself blush.
“Yes, I believe he stole it,” Lazarus continued. “From a chapel or museum, perhaps.”
Sylvaine regretted not getting a closer look at the object, not that she had a good chance in the circumstances. Those time-forgotten gadgets were rare enough, and despite their scientific value the Church of the Ascended hoarded them greedily. She couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt that some madman thief could not only posses such a machine, but use it, while she couldn’t even get her ætherglove to respond to her entreaties.
“How is your project progressing?” Lazarus enquired.
And at once her pleasant respite fell apart, the candid conversation and flaky pastries immaterial against the oncoming dread of her evening workshop. She chewed, trying to find the words to explain her upcoming failure, but couldn’t manage to even meet his eyes.
She rummaged into her bag, seeking some distraction. “Well, I mean, I’ve been busy. I’ve been analyzing other engineers’ projects,” she said, lifting out the strange filtration schematics.
To her surprise Lazarus took them and looked them over with a focused gaze, one by one.
“You said the madman gave these to you?” he asked.
“What? No, they’re Gearswit’s, my professor. Not sure where he got them.”
Lazarus shrugged. “Reads like nonsense to me. But I was curious about your negative-density… Ah, just a moment!” Someone on the street had clearly caught his attention. He smiled and shouted, “Javad!”
Javad? Sylvaine glanced backwards, but there he was, her wayward partner, walking down the street, short, black-haired with a youthful, almost naïvely wide smile. His style had changed, however, he was wearing a suit that almost matched Lazarus’s.
“Mr. Roache!” he called out walking over, then: “Sylvaine?”
“Hello Javad. It’s nice to see you,” Sylvaine said, as the man sat down, his smile turning sheepish. “What have you been up to?” She tried not to sound too accusatory in front of Lazarus.
“Working with Mr. Roache!” he said.
“He’s an excellent engineer, have him on a pet project of mine. Come! Let’s take tea,” Lazarus said, pouring out three cups of steaming water.
“I apologize I quit work so suddenly,” said Javad. “Mr. Roache gave me an excellent offer.”
“I’m not sure you told them you quit,” Sylvaine said, nor me, she kept from adding.
“Ah right, well I’ve been kept very busy, must have slipped the mind.”
“It’s an excellent project,” Lazarus said. “In fact, I think your skills would be invaluable. If you’re interested, of course.”
Sylvaine shrugged. “Does it have a place for a mechanic?”
Javad laughed. “Oh, still bothered by that whole thing?”
She gritted her teeth to hold back some choice words. Javad could be careless with his tongue, but it was something else to dismiss so easily her deepest source of despair. That the man could just laugh off her broken dreams… still it would do no good to berate the idiot in front of Lazarus.
She closed her eyes, and let out a breath, “Yes… I am still having some trouble.”
“My apologies,” Javad said to Sylvaine, glancing quickly at Lazarus. “I just mean, well, I think that could be easily solved. With slickdust.”
Sylvaine raised an eyebrow. “You know about slickdust?”
“Of course!” Javad said. The waiter dashed by with a tray and started to serve the pastries and pour the tea. Javad sipped. “Mr. Roache hooked me up. My work has risen to levels I didn’t know existed.”
“But is it… dangerous?” she asked, pushing her croissant around with her fork. “I mean,” she said, eyes towards Lazarus, “you said it was experimental.”
Lazarus laughed with an unusually nervous tone, tapping his fingers together. Javad laughed without any reservation.
“Is that what he told you?” Javad said, “Gear’s-grits, the man is a salesman.”
“Forgive me,” said Lazarus, “I may have embellished a little. I just thought it might be useful to you, and got a bit carried away in my description.”
Javad shook his head. “No, it may be new to Icaria, but I’ve known people who have been using it for years down in El’Helmaud. No negative effect, so innocuous that I wouldn’t have believed its influence on my æthermantics if I hadn’t tried it myself.”
“And you never mentioned it?” Sylvaine said, trying not to hint at her anger.
Javad paused.
“The supply only came in recently,” Lazarus said. “I’m sure the man didn’t mean to raise false hope.”
“Yes,” Javad said, “I didn’t want you to get excited about something that was not yet available.”
“Speaking of which!” Lazarus took out a red vial and added some to his and Javad’s drink. He gave Sylvaine a wink and shook the vial. “Would you fancy a taste?”
Javad was already drinking, Sylvaine glanced at her own cup, a sad brownish tea stared back. She had been fantasizing about the drug since she had denied it, imagining a world where all of Lazarus’s promises were true. She hadn’t expected another chance, and now that it was in front of her, its seemingly magic powers sounded a tad more plausible.
“And you’re sure it’s safe?” she asked.
From both of them, “Of course!”
She nodded slowly, staring at the drink. The mocking grin of Rostialva danced around in the back off her psyche, hidden laughter echoing in from years of memory. She saw her machine sitting inert, her failures manifest, felt clearly the waves of shame that never ceased to break upon her.
“Well, I guess it couldn’t make things worse.” She tossed the acrid liquid down he
r throat.
Chapter 10
Sylvaine wiped the sweat from her forehead and the oil from her hand as she stared at her near-finished machine. The outer chassis was made mostly of cheap scrap-metal, but within its innards lay dozens of æther circuits, mazes of wires, store shelves’ worth of piping and compressors. This prototype was largely scavenged from the remnants of her previous design, but she was still proud of it. If given ætheric life the generator could turn pure sangleum into enough negative-density to lift an object one hundred times its own mass. Still, that was a very large if.
The workshop itself was in a dense basement, once a minor engine-cooling station back when Icaria was skyward. Its ceiling was a nest of pipes that wormed up to the surface of Icaria, which shook down dust as the occasional autocar or engineering experiment drove on the streets above.
Besides Sylvaine, a couple other students still worked, tinkering with gizmos, gadgets, and ætherial-phase transistors. She lost all sense of time while working, but guessed it must have been late into the night, considering that most of the class had already left. Not Rostialva, unfortunately, Sylvaine could still sense the malva’s stare. Sylvaine glanced back at her, but the woman didn’t even have the decency to look away, to pretend she wasn’t watching Sylvaine, waiting to see the ferral fail.
There wasn’t anything to do about it. Sylvaine knew the script: close her eyes, breathe in and then, nothing. Except, maybe, distant laughter.
Still, there was the slickdust. The lingering aftertaste sat in her mouth, bitter, almost spicy. Besides that, there was no difference. She felt as she had always felt. There was no surge of energy, no gurgle of imbibed knowledge floating in her stomach. There was the machine and her.
No sense in delaying. She took her glove and replaced its small fuel vial with fresh æther-oil, as if that would make any difference. She closed her eyes and held out her hand.
Envision the spark. Envision the spark.
The Sightless City Page 10