Children of Artifice

by Danie Ware

  Caph had also told him that City Hall knew every man and woman by name; knew everything they did, every moment of every day. Told him that they tolerated no rebellion, no freedom, no challenge. No defiance.

  Yet the city had thrived, it had been free from war, unrest, hunger, ever since the famine.

  Out this far, though, Proteus knew of some different truths – that here, City Hall’s absolute control was a little more shady, and that it traded in things darker and less legal. Jay himself was testimony: the families’ presence was still here, discreet and well-paid eyes and ears that kept their masters’ hands clean, kept the ripans still flowing upwards.

  Despite its appearance, much of the wharf’s corruption was just as well-managed as the trade through the merchants’ districts.

  Proteus said, ‘How did Galeas die?’

  ‘He did have a heart attack, of sorts,’ Jay said. ‘Whatever that stuff is, he must’ve taken far too much of it. And it wasn’t only physical – he was delusional, talking about how he was everything he’d ever dreamed he could be.’ His smile was humourless. ‘Mostly wealthy.’

  ‘Do you know what’s in it?’

  ‘Elevated potassium levels can make a heartbeat irregular – but nothing like that.’ Jay gripped Ebi’s hand, looked across the table at Proteus. ‘I took a sample of it up to the Hospital. I do still have some friends up there, and I wondered if they might’ve seen this stuff, or know where it comes from.’

  Proteus nodded, but he was still thinking about Lyss. Knowing his sister, she must have revelled in it, must’ve fallen at its very first touch…

  Died.

  The fear clawed again, and he forced it down – his emotions were becoming a nuisance, an absolute hellsdamned distraction. He needed to get back to Ivar, to Austen and the spider; he needed to know where this stuff had come from, track it back to its distributors, its crafter. He needed to know what was in it, how to counter its influence, what happened when you stopped taking it…

  But something here didn’t make sense. If this stuff was rare, and new, he didn’t know how some small-time scrimshander would have access to it, or be paying for it. And Lyss – Lyss had no real coin. She crafted occasionally, but mostly, she made her ripans from a little petty thievery, sold on through Austen’s network of contacts. And, aside from her liking for parties, she kept herself in Vanchar.

  Neither Lyss nor Galeas had any influence to speak of. They couldn’t afford to buy it, and there was no reason why the drug would be given to them…

  No, something here was wrong.

  Around them, the refectory was almost empty. A cleaner was mopping the floor.

  Proteus shook his head, picked up his empty tea bowl and looked into the bottom. ‘It’s not much to go on, Jay,’ he said. ‘Did he tell you where the stuff came from, who’d sold it to him? Anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Jay shook his head. ‘He said something about ‘glass in the sky, glass—’

  ‘Skyglass.’ Proteus was suddenly sitting up, tea forgotten, tight with anticipation. ‘Did he use the word—?’

  ‘Skyglass?’ Jay blinked at him, confused.

  ‘Or Cloudglass? Did he say…?’

  But Ebi had her hand on Proteus’s arm. ‘Cloudglass?’ she said. ‘That’s not what he said, but… Where did you hear that?’

  The three of them stopped dead, sudden tension bringing silence, a need to understand. Proteus looked from face to face, but the two of them were staring at each other, puzzled, intent.

  He said, ‘How do you know the word?’

  ‘It’s a… theatre word,’ Ebi said. She turned back to face him, confused. ‘It’s very old, used to be used in direction – to make an actor emphasise a particular line or gesture.’

  ‘It can also means marks in the stone, points to remember…’ Proteus let the sentence tail off, thinking hard now, trying to tally Austen’s words with those of both Caph and Ebi.

  Jay said, half-joking, ‘Maybe they’re the same thing – you know, making something memorable.’

  Proteus nodded, but he was watching Ebi and picking his words. He said, ‘What did Galeas say? Exactly? Why did he say about glass in the sky?’ He was suddenly reminded of Caph’s dice playing, of how he pieced the information together – of the leap of intuition that was the gamble on the forthcoming roll. ‘Was there something he… needed to remember? Had he seen something, somewhere?’ He was struggling, now, and he knew it. He thought about the contents of the letters, about the fact that Sahar had been some sort of performer. ‘Maybe in a theatre?’

  Jay said, ‘He didn’t—’

  ‘There’s a theatre in Kier,’ Ebi said slowly. ‘The only one in the lower city, very old. It’s right on the edge of one of the abandoned parts of the district, it was derelict for years.’ She looked from face to face. ‘It’s been re-opened. Recently. Within the last year, I think.’

  ‘Kier.’ Proteus repeated the word like a mantra, trying to focus, to think – Sahar’s letters had mentioned meeting Lyss in Kier. ‘Re-opened by whom?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I have friends out that way, but it’s a bit off my patch.’

  ‘Can’t hurt to look,’ Jay told him.

  Proteus turned back to him, ‘What did Galeas actually say? Can either of you remember?’

  Ebi said, ‘He asked me to tell him his fortune.’ Her words were faintly confrontational, like she was used to being challenged, or to having to defend herself. ‘In one of his last lucid moments – I think he wanted to know which hell he was destined for.’

  ‘And could you tell him?’ Proteus was curious, sceptical and amused.

  ‘He was dying,’ she said, with a slightly helpless shrug. ‘How could I tell him his future? All I could do was to comfort his last hours, and tell him which hell he feared the least.’

  Proteus was watching her now, intrigued by her subtlety and wisdom – she and Jay were a good match. He asked her, very carefully, ‘What was he afraid of?’

  ‘Failing,’ she said. ‘He told us the same thing, over, and over. ‘Eyes that showed the truth reflected, the light that would come. Eyes that remembered everything, that showed him everything’. He was afraid that he would fail – or had failed – whatever was watching him.’

  ‘Cloudglass,’ Proteus said. ‘Memorable things. Eyes in the stone.’ He sank back in his chair, tea-bowl still in his hand. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’m going to go have a look at this theatre. Jay, if you get anything back from the Hospital, hang on to the info and I’ll swing back this way. Couple of days probably. And Ebi…’

  She held out her hand for the bowl. She was grinning wickedly now, and she studied Proteus as if for a reaction. She said, ‘Well, go on then – pass it here and let me have a look. Maybe there’s a hell for you too.’

  *

  Caph came to with a start as something kicked at his ankle, none to gently.

  ‘Come on, son. Up you get.’

  What?

  He sat up and blinked round him, struggling to see in the poor light. The figure standing over him, arms folded, was the barkeep.

  The bed was cold.

  Aden had gone.

  Again.

  ‘Did you hear what I just--?’

  ‘I heard you.’ Caph grabbed at the blanket and sat up. He ground his gaze into focus, looking around him properly. Surely…?

  But Aden’s garments were gone, and the clock-face on the floor read well past midnight.

  Understanding came in a rush: the gates were closed. His father was going to kill him.

  Shit.

  The adrenaline brought him fully awake, shivering in the chill.

  ‘Come on, laddie.’ The barman kicked his ankle again. ‘Out you go.’

  ‘All right, keep your hair on.’ He scrabbled half upright, blanket clutched awkwardly in one hand. ‘Let me dres
s, will you?’

  The man sneered at him, but backed out of the room.

  Retrieving his shirt, Caph wondered, stupidly, why Aden would just vanish like that – vanish again. He wondered what he’d done wrong, what he’d said. Had the man just rolled him for his ripans after all?

  But no, his purse was there, and as full as it had been. Whatever Aden had been after, it hadn’t been coin.

  He finished dressing, stamped grumpily down the stairs and across to the bar. The barman was no help, only told him to get the hells out, and then watched him leave, his glare unfriendly.

  And Caph found himself on the doorstep, still half-pissed, and in a toweringly foul mood.

  The wind was cold; the twisting spiral of the upper city and the top of the crater had both been swallowed by low cloud. The harbour where they’d sat, feet dangling, was empty now, the stalls skeletal ghosts in blue moonlight.

  Rubbish blew about their feet.

  He turned to look up. Home was up there, somewhere, lost in in the grey. He’d have to head round through the merchants’ streets of Kymar, pass the tall towers in Thale – he could get through the gates, if he wanted to risk being recognised, but the steps were a bloody long climb.

  By the hells. It wasn’t the first time he’d gone home drunk, he just hoped his navigation still worked, and that he could make it after this much booze…

  Hoped – this time! – that he could get into the house without being noticed.

  Take deep breath, another, he headed for the steps.

  He walked at first, unsteady and reeling. But after a while, the fear caught him like a stalker in the dark and he found himself starting to run, afraid of the truths that awaited him.

  Breathing four paces in, four paces out, he headed through the night streets of Kymar, one of the poorer merchants’ districts. The buildings here were a mad clutter, a thrown-together jumble of stone-built homes and streets. Metal balconies offered bright and decorous flags; tiny, pillar-fronted temples waited at the corners. In places, stone fountains poured streams of continuous water down the centres of the roads.

  He ran through a small square, and the looming metal skeleton of the old water clock made him jump. He remembered Bec telling him that the figures had used to move, when she’d been a child – she’d come out here to see them. But they’d been damaged by the great storm some twenty-five years before, and now they were frozen, ever-waiting for that final fight.

  Thrown coins glinted in the pool around its feet.

  The running steadied him. It hurt like every hell at first, then his head began to clear. He found himself trying to work out what’d happened.

  Why the hells Aden had just left him.

  Again.

  At the back of Caph’s mind, suspicions shifted, nebulous as phantoms. What were the symbols that he’d drawn on the wall-side? In retrospect, the subsequent change of subject had been as blunt as a punch in the face. Despite his accent, his vocabulary was impressive – and, poor spelling or not, if he hadn’t been to school, then where the hells had he learned to read and write?

  Don’t be ridiculous, Caph told himself, he got someone else to write it for him.

  He ran on.

  He passed the district gate into Thale, and the soldier saluted him, half-asleep. He turned down Narbonne Road, closing on the wide curve of the river, and the streets became steadily wider, homes all recessed behind larger gardens. At times, he crossed the old tram-tracks, long rusted into their grooves. There were stations, as well – he saw one in the half-light, long derelict, its trams still sitting patiently within.

  He ran on, and there were open markets and now-silent street-fairs. There were parks, metal trees and real ones all catching the moonlight; there were streams and ponds, all glittering cold. He ran along the wide bank of the Taar, all donks and cranes, and crossed at the long sunward bridge, the barges moored beneath.

  The upper city was right over him now, colossal in the moonlight, its long steps twisting up into its heights. This was no longer the cut, mined stone of the surrounding streets, this was the elaborately decorous rock that the Builders had crafted, the beating heart of their sealed haven.

  He slowed as he climbed, breathing hard now.

  The stairway was tight and claustro; its vaulted roof was completely dark and spatters of rain flicked past the outer pillars. He passed several of the lower levels – the Theatre, the Hospital – but he didn’t slow down. The soldiers eyed him, but they seemed quiescent enough; as he reached his own gate, he stopped to lean on his knees.

  ‘Caphen.’

  He nodded back, and ducked through the side-gate, trying not to look as panicked as he felt. The air was sharp and windy, up here, and his mufti made him stick out as much as the finery would have done at the harbour. He needed to get home, and quick.

  The wide boulevard and the great metal trees pulled him onwards, glasslights glinting at him all the way.

  He reached the Caphen house and found it in darkness, no lights at the windows, no Darrah in ambush on the doorstop. Pulse pounding, he slipped round and through the garden, hoping to every hell that Bec had left the kitchen window open – and then weak with relief when he found that she had.

  He grabbed the sill, and fed his feet through it, sliding painfully over the catch.

  Then a moment of panic as he realised that the last time he’d come through this way must have been a good five or so years before – and his shoulders had filled out considerably since. He got stuck, squiggled frantically, tore skin and shirt getting in – but landed on the kitchen floor, thanking every hell for the good fortune.

  The kitchen was quiet, not even the houseguards were up.

  Taking a moment to shut the window, he carefully crept across the floor, then slipped out into the lower hallway…

  And came face to face with Darrah.

  Shit!

  For a moment, they stared at each other. The house manager was bare-chested, dressed only in his sleeping trousers. Stupidly, Caph’s mind registered just how gorgeous he really was, standing there in moonlight, his hair loose – then Darrah pulled himself to his full height, and his expression congealed.

  Caph stepped forward, laid a hand on his arm. He said, breathless with panic, ‘Darrah, please…’

  Darrah glanced down at his hand like it was an insect, shook it free. He looked Caph up and down, taking in the dirty boots, the filthy shirt, the rip in his skin. The stinks of reeds and spirits.

  He gave a tiny, momentary smile.

  Then he said, the blandness of his tone as stark as a slap, ‘Goodnight, sir. Do sleep well. Doubtless I’ll see you in the morning.’

  Then he turned his back – his long, naked back – and he walked away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: KOLMARCH

  Proteus left the old station at past midnight, returning to the crumbling darkness of the wharfside backstreets. Jay had offered him a place to sleep – but he could no more sleep under their roof than he could pull off his features and leave them by the bed.

  Something about the wicked and no rest.

  Instead, he’d headed back towards the harbour, winding his way through the cluttered grey dirt of the district’s alleyways. He’d needed distance, emotional and physical, and the anonymity had been welcome, flooding into him and asking nothing. He’d let Aden fade, smoke in the moonlight; embraced the lined face of the lurker with a sense of relief, if it were a set of old and comfortable garments.

  Over him, the clouds sank thunderous, low and angry.

  He pulled the blanket higher over his head – he had no wish for trouble, not tonight. Turning past an old gateway, half-fallen into bramble and creeper, he crossed a broken wall to a crumbling temple, a pillared and headless carcass, layered with debris. He sat in its sanctuary, his knees drawn up and his arms around them.

  Carefully, he wrapped himself against eye
s and cold. Then he leaned against the stonework and let the tiredness take him.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. As if his emotions had grown unhindered, he’d lost his place of lucidity, his critical calm. The wind rose, creaking at the half-hinged metal gate; he shivered at the memories of dreams. Lyss dying while Jay fought to save her. Austen, his voice layered with reedsmoke and dread.

  And Caph, the heat and the taste of him…

  Frustrated, he banged his head on the stonework, as if he could physically knock the memory free; he breathed slowly, five beats in and five beats out, timing the count, striving to find the central place, the place where the information was cold…

  Detached.

  But the memories wouldn’t leave him. Loitering with Lyss by the quayside in Ivar, watching the cargo boats, all laden with their ore from the mines. They’d had Caphen colours even then, he remembered, gleaming blue and gold. Their paint had reflected in the sun-bright water.

  When he found the dice in his hand, he didn’t let it go.

  And at last, the spectres left him alone.

  He awoke with the first flush of the dawn, and with echoes of shouting coming from the nearby Vowen harbour.

  He was chilled through, his back stiff. His eyes felt itchy and sore. He blinked at the dirt; put his hands to his face—

  Found he was still holding Caph’s dice.

  The shouting coalesced into marching feet, and sharp, greycoat orders. There was a flurry of scuffle and protest, then the crash of thrown glass. The shock of it brought him properly awake.