Noble V: Greylancer

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  It was pointing toward the corridor on the left, much like the one from which this dark figure had emerged.

  Trying not to appear terribly interested, I ambled before the corridor and stole a quick look. Though I’d intended only a glance, my eyes fastened upon the figure lying in the middle of the corridor about fifteen meters away.

  I froze, not because the female figure was naked, but because her prostrate body disrupted the orderliness of the place. Her haphazard presence relegated the yard to a dump.

  My attention instantly shifted to her body. Her gleaming black skin, the rivets hammered into her shoulders, elbows, and neck captivated my artistic sensibilities honed over forty-something years. The left arm was exquisite, but the right arm and neck dangled from the body, each barely held together by one rivet. There were crescent-shaped holes around the right elbow, knee, and ankle where the rivets had gone missing.

  “Who created her?” I heard myself ask. My voice sounded distant.

  The woman was perfect. Her finely burnished hair, graceful neck, a shiny black back that would reflect lightning, the curves from her hips down to the ankles were like a dream. What impressed me most was the beauty with which the rivets and screws had been driven. This particular craftsmanship was rivaled only by the 3,004th descendant of the Zaitan line, and myself.

  Ah, just look at the workmanship of her face!

  I glanced back to ask why the black figure had alerted me to this woman’s presence, but the figure had vanished.

  When I drew closer and looked down upon the woman, I felt something wasn’t quite right.

  She was not perfect. But it was not because of some flaw or damage.

  Maybe something is wrong with her other side. I put a hand on her shoulder to sit her up, when I sensed the presence of others behind me.

  They quickly surrounded me.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” The voice of the young woman clanged like an alarm bell.

  “Nothing,” I answered, not even bothering to turn around. I knew what they were doing here. It wasn’t at all strange that a woman was among junkyard bandits. After all, we lived in an age where women won mixed-gender weightlifting competitions. Using the Tendo breathing method, women were capable of transporting a hundred, even two hundred kilos of scrap metal in their slender arms. Three women working in concert were capable of carrying over a ton.

  “Nice find,” said the voice kindly. A faint scent of perfume wafted into the air. “But we had an eye on her first. You will have to leave her here.”

  “Your voice sounds very hoarse.” Pulling the robotic woman’s arm over my shoulder, I drew her to her feet. Solving her mysteries would have to wait till I evacuated her to a more appropriate location. “It can’t be the effects of the smoke alone. You’d best have a doctor take a look at your throat.”

  One of the bandits behind me kicked my female companion in the hip, which shook my shoulders.

  “Please leave her here,” the female bandit requested again. She would likely apologize and ask for my forgiveness in that same gentle tone when she shredded me to pieces.

  This was going nowhere. At this rate, we would only continue to inhale the filthy air from the city. “Here are my terms. Come to 1313 Yami Street in the Shin Shin District in two weeks, at which time I will give you—”

  Before I could offer another woman in place of this one, the bandits cried out in unison, “Yami Street! Shin Shin District? Then you must be—”

  “Master Craftsman Monde,” I answered. And before the second chorus of cries had died down, I slipped past my captors and turned around.

  The bandits were all women wearing long dresses and gloves, no doubt daughters of good families living in the core wards. Their masks also appeared to be expensive—too expensive, in fact, for merely concealing their identities from witnesses to their bad deeds.

  Before turning the corner with my prize, I said, “In two weeks then.” The bandits did not answer. The sky had turned violet from soot and smoke.

  †

  Upon returning to the workshop, I found Shwann inside. He was my part-time assistant. By “part-time,” I mean that he was not officially in my employ, so he came and went as he pleased. Still I did not refuse his help when he offered it. Shwann was as adept at fastening rivets and screws as I. All he needed was to improve his welding technique, and he might have passed for a twenty-year veteran of the trade.

  As I suspended the woman from chains, I asked Shwann what he made of this creation.

  “She seems odd,” he answered, exactly as I had expected. It was not that his answer was obvious. In fact, if you were to ask the craftsmen in the city, only one in a hundred would answer likewise—in other words, zero of them would, given how there were exactly fifty craftsmen approved by the city.

  Listening to the beautiful squeak of the ceiling pulleys, I went about the work of securing the woman’s body in chains, a task that required the sensitivity of a poet, when a whistle issued forth from one of the speaking tubes hanging from the wall. It was a gentleman who’d called previously about an odd job too small to consider taking on. After inquiring his name as a matter of courtesy, I explained that I was busy and slammed the lid over the cone. I received no less than a thousand such minor requests each year.

  I cast a long, unabashed look at the woman. The only time I’d felt any desire for a woman’s naked body was the month immediately after I’d fired up the coals in this workshop for the first time. Shwann still could not look at such a sight without blushing. It was this innocence that had compelled me to take him under my wing.

  “Oh? Odd how?” I asked, the devil getting into me. His delicate face flushed again with embarrassment, imbuing him with a look of insolence.

  Yet he did not fail me with his answer.

  “The left side of the throat.”

  I nodded my approval. There was indeed a tiny hole just above her carotid artery. In fact, there were two. Discovering them amid the jet-black gleam of the woman’s steel skin was no easy feat.

  “What beautiful punctures,” he said, fascinated, as I tried to imagine what kind of punch and hammer was used to produce them.

  No doubt the tools had been extraordinarily dense, sharp, and heavy. Were they tools from the so-called “stars in the sky” people were talking about? Shwann’s question brought me back from my reverie.

  “What do you intend to do with her? Will you fill in the holes and restore her to her original pristine form?”

  I shook my head, though that task might also have been to Shwann’s benefit. “No, not that.”

  “Then why did you bring her here? Do you plan to use some of her parts to build Lord Voyevoda’s requested item?”

  “The wound on this woman’s neck—wouldn’t you like to recreate the thing that carried out this exquisite workmanship?”

  “Wasn’t it done with a punch and hammer?” he asked.

  “To the eye, yes. But my instincts tell me otherwise. We must suspend our work for Lord Voyevoda. I will let his servant know immediately.”

  “He will not be pleased. Forgive me, but Lord Voyevoda has been the greatest champion of your work.”

  “In twenty years, the greatest champion I’ve never met.” I felt my lips curl into a self-mocking smile. No matter how much work he commissioned or the size reward he promised in return for my creations, I could not bring myself to warm to a supporter whose face I’d never seen and who always conducted his business via servants. Even his address was unknown to me. “I will deliver his order by the promised date. But we must work around the clock. You may leave if you’re not interested.”

  “Not a chance.” Shwann rolled the sleeves of his white cotton shirt up to his elbows. The distorted reflection of his hands—hands too pale to know physical labor—danced like mystical creatures over the woman’s shiny black stomach. I was struck by the strangeness of the scene but knew not to whom, Shwann or the iron woman herself, this feeling should be attributed.

&nb
sp; †

  Our first order of business was to examine the wound on the woman’s throat.

  Extrapolating the shape of the tool that produced these holes based on the depth and diameter, as well as their internal measurements, required a full day.

  While it was all strictly conjecture, I stuck the drawing I’d sketched based on the collected data in front of Shwann’s nose. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “That makes two of us,” I said.

  “But who would—why would someone do such a thing?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I. It boggles the mind. But frankly, I’m not surprised. The kinds of jobs that enliven a craftsman are all like this.”

  “Just what is it that the dark figure from the scrap yard wants you to accomplish?”

  “Who knows? Perhaps I am already carrying out his plan without even knowing. In any case, if we begin to stray, we will need some redirection. Let’s pray that he will appear again when that time comes. What are you looking at?”

  I peered down at Shwann’s hands. He was staring at my recreation of the wound.

  “Master Monde, your rendering is brilliant as well. But this time…” He cast an admiring look at the woman’s neck. “Her wound is more beautiful.”

  “Let’s get back to work.”

  “On Lord Voyevoda’s item?”

  “Fool.”

  “But—” Shwann blurted out. “We know what put this mark on the woman’s throat. What more is there to do?”

  “Are you satisfied? The thing that created this wound, which so enthralls you, is not what we guessed.”

  “Well, no, but…” Shwann fell silent.

  I fixed a hard look on his pale face. Whoever this young man was, it was unlikely he’d ever had to confront such a gaze. “Consider this your opportunity to prove yourself a full-fledged craftsman,” I said, envisioning that blue flame burning in every artist’s heart. My wife, when she was alive, used to chide me that it symbolized perversity.

  “With pleasure, Master Monde. I swear by the gleam of Liber steel.”

  “You will recreate the item that made this wound. I shall conceive the being that wields it. Only when we accomplish this will my ambition, and the wishes of my strange patron, become reality. Should your measurements be off by even a millimeter, the pressure applied on the chisel too strong or not strong enough, or the temperature of the coals even a degree off, the whole of my work will come to nothing. Whether we succeed in earning what will likely be a peculiar reward from a most peculiar patron or become the laughingstock of his world—rests entirely on your skill.”

  Shwann’s knees appeared to buckle as the gravity of my words registered in his mind. I half expected him to fold under the pressure and run.

  But my mysterious young assistant—whose past was unknown to me—put a hand on his minutely detailed gold buckle, swept back his gold locks with his other hand, and answered exactly as I had expected. “On the gleam of Liber steel and my soul, you have my word.”

  2

  What Shwann made of this task, I did not know. I only know that he did not take this challenge lightly.

  First, he recreated the deadly weapon by pouring molten iron into the woman’s wound. Gauging the eutectic temperature and just the right moment to remove the objects from the mold requires no small amount of skill and concentration even for me, but Shwann managed it deftly.

  The moment the items were submerged in the vat of distilled water, clouds of steam hissed and billowed in the air, forming a faint rainbow in the corner of the workroom. Shwann and I stopped for a moment and stared, mesmerized by the color spectrum arching across the room until it faded like a mirage.

  As I looked down at the tiny items on the tray, I heard Shwann ask from behind, “What do you think they are?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” I answered. In all my years as master craftsman, never had I seen anything that was so outside my realm of knowledge and experience.

  Two objects, no more than two centimeters long, with pointed ends. What in the world could they be?

  “Find out how these two might best be fitted,” I said, offering what I thought to be the next plausible step.

  “Might I employ the services of a metal burnisher first?”

  “Yes, all right.” I nodded, trying to conceal my embarrassment. It had completely slipped my mind! Once cast into shape, the metals had to be carefully polished by the hand of an expert. The god of smithing would never forgive me for such an elementary lapse in logic.

  Ever since I had chosen the path of craftsman, my metal burnisher had always been Shwalde, a woman from the Yufu district, where the rowhouses stretched ten kilometers like dominoes.

  The combustible engine popped and wheezed as the steam car carried us to a street lined with brick tenement houses.

  The old woman, who was over three hundred years old, welcomed us into her cramped apartment home on the top floor of one of the tenements.

  “Now, what are these odd things you’ve brought me?” Shwalde asked suspiciously. Cité’s most skilled burnisher took the deadly weapons in her hands and examined them, squinting beneath the colored light streaming in through the stained glass skylight in the ceiling.

  “Any idea what they are?” I asked as if we’d met for the first time.

  “I seem to recall a very long time ago…” Shwalde shook her head. “No, perhaps not. I’ve become forgetful in my old age. Still…”

  “Still?”

  “I can’t shake this feeling that they’re very dangerous. I’ll take extra care in polishing them.”

  “I shall be most grateful.”

  After Shwalde promised to finish the job within three days, I stood from my chair to part ways.

  But the old woman did not follow. Her head bobbed against her chin first and then the rest of her body fell forward onto the table without a sound.

  The poor woman was as light in my arms as if she were made of tinfoil, as Shwann helped me carry her to her bed. Thankfully, she came to before we had to give her water and medicine, which was a great relief to us.

  “It’s my lungs,” Shwalde explained. “But don’t you worry, I’ll finish the job as promised.”

  “Can we find you some medicine?”

  “Don’t you think I’ve tried already? Never mind that, would you mind bringing them over here, lad?”

  Shwann grabbed the weapons from the table and placed them in her wrinkled hands.

  Saying nothing, I watched her fingers slowly close around them.

  “I am at peace,” Shwalde said, as if in a dream. By the looks of her, it appeared to be a good dream. “What we have here seems to be very dangerous and precious at the same time. Why do they calm me so? Now how much longer are you going to stare at me in my sorry state? Go on home.”

  †

  Upon receiving word on the morning of the appointed day, Shwann headed out for the old woman’s home.

  When my assistant returned several hours later, I was studying the liquid metal bubbling from the window of the smelting furnace, pleased with the exceptional quality of the coal and iron he’d procured this year.

  “Shwalde has been taken to the hospital,” Shwann informed me upon his return. Holding a small package with both hands in my direction, he continued, “She gave this to me at the hospital. She was clutching it in her arms and did not let go until she saw me.”

  I took the package and asked, “What do you think it is?” despite knowing the answer. I felt a desperate need to achieve some modicum of mutual understanding.

  I set the package on the worktable and opened it. The tiny lethal weapons glinted inside. Was the fact that I had not yet reached Shwalde’s age the reason why the burnished items did not appear any more sinister?

  I refrained from asking Shwann’s opinion.

  “I believe I know how they are fitted,” my assistant said a bit bashfully.

  “Oh?
And?”

  “I made a model out of clay and plaster. May I show it to you?”

  “Of course.”

  As Shwann turned on his heels to retrieve the item, the doorbell jangled violently.

  I hurried to the several dozen speaking tubes sticking out of the wall, removed the lid covering the cone and tube connected to the entrance, and asked, “Who’s there?”

  “We made your acquaintance at the scrap metal yard up north a week ago,” answered a clarion voice. An image of the ladies in their long white gloves and elegant dresses floated into my mind. The high-rise district, from which they came, held lavish balls every night.

  After waving Shwann off, I said into the speaking tube, “Forgive me, but I have nothing to offer you in exchange for the woman. You’ll have to wait another week.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t do.”

  Several seconds later, the building was rocked by a loud explosion. The heavy thud of the outer door falling inward shook the speaking tube in my hand. The outer door was made of iron. Just how had the young ladies gotten their hands, so delicate that they might break, on such a large quantity of high explosives?

  The door separating the workshop from the residence was three times thicker than the outer door. I undid the lock and waited for Shwann.

  Boom! The door shook.

  The door buckled inward, as cracks formed around the hinges and streaked across the wall. Boom!

  The door fell with a dull thud.

  A woman made of steel stepped over the rusty fallen door and rushed into the workshop first. She was a meticulous female recreation down to every last eyelash and strand of fluttering hair. The workmanship on her jet-black skin, despite paling in comparison to Shwalde’s technique, was extraordinary.

  “Whose creation is this?” I asked the shadows in flowing dresses standing behind the steel woman.

  “A craftsman who works for me,” answered an exceedingly beautiful girl. I was blinded by the brilliant glare of the stone hanging from her necklace. It was not an adamantine spar, but a gem. “Now how about returning the other woman to me?”