Children of Artifice

by Danie Ware

  It belonged on the ouroboros, with the strange spirit in the depths of district Kier. The same place where Lyss must have met Sahar.

  On a sudden, impulse, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the strange-shaped crystal ring that he’d found in Lyss’s box of letters. He fitted it into the gap…

  Fitted it perfectly.

  The Eyes of the Stone.

  Then, following a compulsion he wasn’t quite sure he understood, he lifted it to the window and looked through it.

  Go on then, he thought. Show me.

  Show what you remember.

  And it cut into his vision like a blade made of light…

  Lyss.

  He was wearing her face and he was laughing, spinning though elation with Sahar in his arms. Happiness flooded her, wonder; a love like she’d never known. Sahar was everything she’d ever wanted, and her face was beautiful and her hair was like rainbow and her kiss was like blood and wine and rain…

  Anatar.

  It all fitted so flawlessly that he fell back on his elbows, sprawling against the chair. Piled rubbish scattered.

  But it didn’t stop there.

  At the Torquar, stage lights flashed. They lit a writhing, whirling flicker of metal. Flames flared and guttered; music rose, discordant and plucking at her nerves. She was on her back, held down by claws, the seethe of the Cloudglass serpent above her. She could hear it; see the patterns it made as if it drew them in the darkening air.

  It sparkled, laughing at her.

  Proteus fought the vision, tried to collect his thoughts. This was nothing; dreams and illusions, more trickery. With an effort, he pulled himself into a sitting position. He struggled to feel the chair, the matting, the coin in his hand.

  Cold, hard edges. Things that were real and made sense.

  But the onslaught grew worse.

  Cloudglass: Anatar, sitting with Lyss before the great metal creation that stretched like some industrial monster, its crystal eyes alight with resentment.

  But Lyss had stared into the coils and said nothing.

  Anatar tried to speak to her – a caress, a drink. But she was too far gone, too consumed by the stimulant.

  She had no words.

  Above her, the huge metal might of the sculpture started to move.

  It was wrong, sinuous, impossible, a writhing of steel and zinc and copper – but the sculpture itself was not shifting. Instead, it was shedding its metal skin, and that skin was alive.

  As the scales peeled back and hit the floor, so they became creatures, different sizes, arachnid, many-legged and sharp-pincered. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Even as she stared, her mouth and eyes wide, they were on her and over her and in her eyes and her ears and her mouth and her hair and they were pinning her down. Holding her to the bench, a thousand sets of pincers sinking home.

  Proteus watched, unable to move. And they went from being part of the sculpture to a part of the metal bench – a new skin, welding her fast and helpless.

  Ganthar smirked, ran a hand down her cheek. Her mouth was held open by pincers in her lips, her cheeks and jaw.

  Anatar said, ‘My poor love. I’m sorry. But this has to happen.’

  The claws about her mouth ripped through her skin.

  Watching this, Proteus knew that his own skin was shifting with horror, and with his love for his sister – a love that came straight from the innocence of their childhoods, from things so long-lost he’d all but forgotten them.

  When it was over, Anatar held her thumb and forefinger over Lyss’s face, almost as though she held a writhing scorpion by its tail.

  ‘This is truth,’ she said. ‘It will show you where we came from. Reveal the lies that Austen has told you, and tell you what he has not.’ She let the unseen thing go. ‘Why you belong with us.’

  Ganthar smiled, tasting her blood on his thumb.

  She sprang taught, choking – on her own horror, on the fragment of unseen creature that Anatar had dropped down her throat. Her back arched, but the metal pincers would not let her move – they tore great gashes in her skin, in places she was down to the bone. She was trying to scream, but her mouth was opening wider, wider, way beyond the scope of her jaws. Cuts slashed into her skin. And she was starting to fade, to waste away like some desiccating corpse…

  The smouldering presence of the ouroboros watched her.

  Anatar shook her head. ‘I’m sorry we had to do this,’ she said. ‘But Raife will make it better – for all of us. Our family will be together again. The hurt will stop soon.’

  But then Proteus’s vision blurred – as his sister faded completely, he lost the focus and the scene was gone.

  He was sat on the floor at the foot of Austen’s chair, tears streaking his face, his bland ‘home’ face that he wore like old shoes--

  ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

  He rubbed his hands across his eyes, peered through the grey smudge of light. Austen stood in the doorway, black-clad against the weather, all height and angles. He’d raised an eyebrow, half-curious, half-amused.

  ‘Aus…’ Proteus looked up at him like he was some spindly metal construct, looming in the light. ‘You’re okay.’ His voice refused to obey him, it sounded dirty, full of rust. He tried to sit up. ‘You’re back.’

  ‘Of course I’m back.’ The old man grinned, extended a thin hand to help Proteus to his feet. He eyed the coin that now lay on the floor. ‘So are you, by the looks of it. Want some tea?’

  *

  Caph had no idea how long he’d sat in the dark.

  When he heard the bolt shoot back, though, he was on his feet, his heart stopping, his throat closed. Light cracked round the edge of the door, blinding him; he raised a hand to shield his eyes.

  But the figure was too slim to be Ganthar.

  He sat back down, almost shaking with relief.

  As his vision adjusted, he saw that it was an older man, dark of skin, and wearing the full robes of the ranking metallurgist. He bore a glasslight that lit his bald head to a gleam, and he had a sophistication of presence that rose from him like warmth. In his other hand, he carried the box that Caph had lost.

  His hands.

  ‘Raife.’ Caph stared at him as he closed the door.

  ‘Caphen,’ the man returned politely, sketching him a half-bow. His voice was like dark silk, soft and deep, perfect. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you; I’ve been an admirer of your family’s work for a very long time. Something I deeply wanted to emulate, when I was a younger man.’ He smiled.

  ‘So what’s this now?’ It was harsh, and Caph didn’t care. ‘Empathy? Bribery?’ He folded his arms and glowered. ‘Let me the hells out of here.’

  ‘You can leave whenever you choose.’ The man was still smiling. ‘I’m not here to threaten you, I’m here because I’d like your help.’ There was a sincerity to him that was touching, very human. ‘And I wanted to see if you’d… remembered anything.’

  Caph sighed. ‘I’ve told you—’

  ‘The man who fought for you, who lost his face. He’s my… brother.’ Raife took Caph’s jaw in one hand and looked carefully at the bruising. ‘And I’ve been looking for him for a very long time.’ He smiled, the expression faintly chill. ‘He’s clever, and dangerous. He’s a masterful player, a musician of human emotion. He strums people like you’d play your zanyar. And he’s vanished into the crowds of Kier, and is proving impossible to find.’ His hands on Caph’s bruises were clinical, but he could feel the pain lessening. ‘Caphen, you know him. You and he have a powerful connection… and you’re going to tell me what that connection is.’ He paused, searching Caph’s face. ‘Please understand me: it’s critical that I track him down.’

  Caph pulled back from the contact, said, ‘I’m not doing anything until you tell me what the hells is going on.’

  ‘T
he future,’ the man said, his smile spreading. ‘Your future, too, Caphen Talmar. I can heal your hands, fully and finally, give you back your music.’ He lifted the box, opened it, let it shine. ‘If you have the courage to let me.’

  Caph caught his breath; torn by an answer he had no way to give.

  ‘Jularn’s craftsmanship is exquisite,’ the man continued, angling the box towards the light. ‘I was at the Academy with her, did she tell you? She was many years ahead of me, and I was in awe of her, lost in wonder at her skills. Yet I’ve gone further, fulfilled things even she has only dreamed about. She was right to send you here. You, Caph, you have a potential unequalled, a chance for your music to surpass everything this city has ever seen.’ The words were pure magic, but Caph didn’t understand what he meant. ‘Let me give you back your voice, your purpose. All the adulation you lack.’ He leaned forwards, his tones soft. ‘You deserve them, Caph, you know you do. Haven’t you suffered enough?’

  Caph stared at them. His own hands were clenched; suddenly aching for strings and skills they’d missed, for the ripple and flex of their lost dexterity, for the freedom that his playing had brought him.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said suddenly, looking up.

  ‘Who I say I am,’ Raife said. ‘Thantar Velten Raife, years ago; now, yes, just ‘Raife’.’ He gave a short, graceful bow. ‘And you’re Caphen,’ he said. ‘With all of Artifice’s gifts behind you, whether you realise it or not.’ He closed the box with a snap, cutting off the shine of the actuators. In its place, he took a small bag from a pouch at his belt. ‘My family disowned me, did you know that? House Thantar are the oldest family of all, their line goes back to the first days after the Builders, when their servants took command of City Hall. And I know the secret of its power, how it sees everything, and how it keeps control. And I know how to break it.’ Smiling, he opened the bag, tipped the smallest amount of the substance onto his fingertip. ‘Change is coming, Caph, and swiftly – my family is nearly complete. And now, I have you…’ He smiled. ‘I have little patience with Ganthar’s brutality, but your skills, Caphen, I have such great things in store for you… Tell me how you know my brother, and you can have anything you wish.’

  *

  Back in his chair, skinny fingers wrapped round a bowl of tea, Austen had kicked off his boots and was sat, one thin leg outstretched, toes spread, inspecting a hole in his sock.

  Proteus wondered where the old man had been.

  Pacing, rubbish underfoot, his own tea was forgotten on the table. He had a headful of information, too many questions, too many images, nothing he could completely trust. He could see the coin as it glittered on the table-top, its glass casting rainbows on the wall. He could feel Lyss’s death, crawling over his skin like it had skittered over the floor of her rooms – on little metal feet. He could feel the dirty metal serpent, the loss of his own mind.

  He could feel the loss of his own detachment, and confusion rising in its wake.

  He said, ‘You went outside?’

  But Austen didn’t reply. He drew the knee up and rested his chin upon it – watching Proteus out of shrewd, bright eyes.

  He said, ‘I went looking for someone. A… ah… customer.’

  Proteus matched him, stare for stare. The old man didn’t like the outside; he’d not set foot beyond these rooms in ten years or more. The lies that Austen has told you. He wondered what Austen was hiding…

  Hiding in all of this junk.

  When the old man said nothing more, Proteus indicated the coin. ‘D’you know where this came from?’ He threw out the question like a fisherman’s line, a hook at its end. ‘Lyss was taken, Aus.’ It was a barb, an accusation. ‘Taken by people who tortured her, maybe to death.’ His voice twisted, and it was a moment before he could carry on. ‘And whoever they are, they knew her, they know me, and they know you.’ As if his control had abandoned him for good, he was glowering now, anger bristling across his shoulders. ‘You want to tell me what I’m missing?’

  Austen leaned forward and picked up the coin. He looked at it, and at the crystal it now contained, turning it over and over so that the lights played across his skin. Then he exhaled, sagged back like an empty sack, closed his eyes. ‘I warned you, Ro,’ he said. ‘I told you to be careful.’

  ‘What is this? What the hells have I just blundered into?’ He was angry; his careful control was cracking. With an effort, he submerged the feelings of betrayal.

  ‘What do you need to know?’ Austen said, his eyes still closed, ‘That the sun is older than the Builders? That Kei and Vei are real? What we’d find if we had the courage to leave our haven?’ He cracked one eye open, looked at Proteus from its corner. ‘Or that when I found you and Lyss, you weren’t alone?’

  Proteus stopped his pacing, like a man who walks along the cliffs at Vanchar and suddenly finds himself at their edge, staring a hundred feet down at the glass beach and the water.

  He said nothing. Stone-dust trickled from the cracks in his childhood.

  Austen opened both eyes to look up at him. There was no fight in the old man, no defiance; he had an air of… inevitability, almost, as if he’d been expecting this. ‘I’ve told you the story many times, Ro, the story of the storm and the water clock.’ His gaze was old as rust, old as the red sun. ‘The story of every priest and doomsayer, decrying that Kei was angry with us for something-or-another, and was coming to destroy us.’ His smile was rueful. ‘And there you were, you and Lyss, crouched against the wall, tiny and lost, and very scared. You were homeless, scruffy, starving. And I saw you there, and I brought you back to Ivar. And all of that’s still true.’

  ‘But there’s a background,’ Proteus said. ‘A ‘rest of the story’.

  ‘You were only onlookers, crouched on the outskirts,’ Austen said. ‘Nothing to do with what was really going on. In the square, there was a gang of other kids, some teenagers, a couple a little older than that. And there was a hell-rage to the storm…’ he was reciting it like a litany, ‘…and the city had never seen its like.’

  In the back of Proteus’s mind stirred a faint image, a ghost of a childhood memory: wind-torn sky, shattering tiles, metal creaking and screaming. He stayed where he was, staring at Austen.

  The old man went on, ‘They had a bonfire and a big dare and a lot of half-baked knowledge. They were making equations in the dirt, drinking and laughing. And they had no idea what the hells they were doing.’ He learned forward, though his eyes were still focused on the memory. ‘They were only playing, only pushing their boundaries, as kids will. But sometimes maybe Kei does listen; maybe that miner does dig too deep. And they summoned it, Ro, they called it up from the very hells themselves.’

  Proteus had a sudden chill, a very visual memory of Ebi’s little figures on the shelf in Jay’s office. He said, ‘There’s no such thing as a hellspirit—’

  ‘Of course there is,’ Austen said. ‘And it came, and they couldn’t understand it, or control it. And it tore them to screaming pieces.’ His eyes flickered at the recollection. ‘Well, most of them.’

  Proteus was still staring at him, a rise of dread in his heart. He knew this; on some level, somewhere, he remembered this happening.

  ‘Three of them survived,’ Austen said. He met Proteus’s gaze, a red spark growing in the heart of his vision. ‘I tried to stop it, I tried…’

  A cloaked figure… a shadow, fighting…

  Proteus still stared at him, transfixed, trying to understand. He had too many questions, a multitude of loose ends pulled from a knot of incomprehension…

  ‘I faced it, the thing they’d summoned.’ Austen was talking like a confession. ‘But it fooled me, it broke into pieces, and the pieces fled. Hid themselves. And now…’ His eyes were bright now, scarlet-tinged and fierce; he turned to Proteus. ‘Ro, Proteus, my son. You need to tell me everything. Everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve found. Everything the
eyes in the stone just showed you. I need to know who and what and where these people are. Because I’ve been waiting for this. They carry the pieces of the thing they summoned, and I need to find them.’

  ‘Pieces?’ Proteus was still staring, still struggling to understand. ‘How can you fight a hellspirit? How do you face…?’

  Austen gave a grin, edged and nasty. ‘Age, mostly,’ he said. ‘And knowledge. And if I’m going to do it again, then I need information – everything you can tell me.’

  Proteus could feel the old man’s tension – its echoes coalesced into droplets of sweat on his skin. And it made him realise something else, a fear entirely of his own and of something that was far more real and immediate... that he’d made a mistake. He had stumbled right into the middle of something huge, something…

  Austen had told him to be careful.

  ‘Hellsdammit, Aus.’ He said it like shock, like the city had tilted sideways and he was struggling to keep his balance. ‘What the hells is all this? I’m foundering here. You’re supposed to explain it to me…’

  Austen stood up, came to put a hand on Proteus’s shoulder, look into his face. It made Proteus feel like a regretful teenager, shamed by some unwise prank. His breath caught, and he faltered. ‘I know you told me just to watch – but I wanted to know about Lyss. I was only… looking for a way in, for answers. Same as I’ve always done.’ His voice pulled with shame. ‘They’ve got a… a creature, down there, like a great rusting beastie. It’s a construct, an icon that… got inside my head. The one time it mattered, really mattered, I—’

  ‘I got us into this mess,’ Austen said. ‘And I have to fix it. Tell me what you can.’

  Proteus dropped his gaze, unable to speak. The image was burned into him: Ganthar, Anatar, Lyss, Caph. He wet his lips, managed to say it, ‘I lost control, lost my face. And they knew who I was, they recognised me.’ It was a confession. ‘I… I fled. I left Lyss, left Caph. I just ran.’