Dollop looked at Phoebe, his penetrating eyes alight.
“I told you of the Ona, may her g-g-golden ember blaze. Do you rec-call?”
“She was a prophet or something, right?” she asked quietly.
“The Great Engineer’s most f-f-faithful messenger. Um, the—the Ona taught us that selfless acts performed on the cycle of Rekindling are d-divine, and that there is no greater good than to—to save the lives of others. Phoebe, what you d-d-did this day—”
“What we did,” she said to Mr. Pynch and the Marquis.
His tone dropped to a whisper. “I—I have prayed to Makina much since our meeting, t-t-to understand why She would lead me to you, why She would p-place me in the company of humans. I feared you, doubted you, but the T-Tender of the Forge has spoken. You are blessed. No—no matter what, I am your devoted servant for the remainder of my span.”
“Not my servant,” Phoebe said. “My friend.”
Dollop nodded contentedly. She could feel Micah’s eyes upon her again. The sky came alive with color, vibrant fireworks of swirling stars. Phoebe turned to cranky Mr. Pynch and held something out to him.
“I was wrong to not trust you,” she said.
In her hand was his striped green necktie, roughly mended but intact. Mr. Pynch’s tight scowl faded, and his wonky eyes slowly bulged in their little sacs.
“You…” he grumbled low. “You did this?”
“As best I could,” she said. “The thread doesn’t really match, and the stitches are a little rough, but…”
Mr. Pynch caressed the fabric, speechless for the first time.
The exploding night sky drew their attention.
“Er, best not miss the light show,” Mr. Pynch said with a nervous smile.
And so the five companions lay side by side beneath the skylight as the Rekindling shone down upon them with spectacular astral fire.
Phoebe settled her arm, and for the briefest of moments, her hand grazed Micah’s. His skin was harder than she expected, bumpy with calluses but warm. She had a sudden distressing urge to grasp it in hers. Quickly, she faked a scratch and set her hand at a safe distance, praying he hadn’t noticed.
As she stared at the infinite night sky, Phoebe had the strange sensation of being cut loose, unmoored and floating through this vast and unfamiliar universe. Beside her, the Marquis’s opticle pulsed like a beacon, as if he were conversing with the flickering stars. She wasn’t sure what he was saying to them, or what they might be telling him in reply.
And yet, somehow, the deepest parts of her understood.
hoebe barely slept. The ridged cubbies in the plasm channels were hard, her empty stomach ached, and the Rekindling lasted all night. But none of that kept her friends awake. Her anxious, buzzing thoughts were to blame. The more she tried to quiet her brain, the further sleep seemed to slip away from her.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, she roused when the first splashes of dawn trickled through the skylights overhead. Despite her restless night, she felt keen and eager, like her senses had somehow been heightened. Micah was sleeping soundly nearby, and it took all of her willpower to keep from sniping him. After their conversation last night, it would have felt like bad form.
She saw that Mr. Pynch and Dollop were already awake, whispering in Rattletrap as they scratched at the glassy-smooth walls. With a grunt, Dollop wrenched something that looked like a fat bolt from the surface. It squirmed in his grip, its head puckering with a weird kissing sound. He popped it in his mouth and munched on it. Mr. Pynch said something that made them both laugh, then shoved a handful of the wriggling critters into his own gaping maw.
“H-happy rise!” Dollop said with his mouth full.
“Salutations and jubilations! I was just edifying our good friend here on the finer points of hunting the delectably elusive spotted pinpod.”
“Delicious,” she said with a chuckle. Unsettling though their mehkan meal was, she was envious. If she didn’t find any food soon, she might even be willing to give these a try. “Where’s the Marquis?”
“Ah, me associate traversed ahead of us to deduciate the most clandestine entry into Sen Ta’rine,” he said, chomping pleasantly. “It wouldn’t do to have prying eyes.”
“What’s for breakfast?” Micah said with a yawn.
“Spotted pinpod omelet with two crispy strips of pinpod and a glass of freshly squeezed pinpod juice,” she said with a straight face. Micah looked at her blankly, his hair in a red tumble. Too early for a joke, she guessed.
“Shall we hit the ore, as they say?” Mr. Pynch asked as he reached for his tie to wipe his mouth. His eyes bulged as he realized it was gone once again.
“Why that pompous, snaky-fingered little…”
The four of them wound farther into the plasm channels, this time without the benefit of the Marquis’s opticle. Micah held his Lodestar aloft to provide some light, but neither Mr. Pynch with his nozzle nor Dollop with his nocturnal vision seemed to need it. There was a spring in Phoebe’s step. Despite her uncertainty and the ever-present fear of what was ahead, she felt lighter than she could remember.
“S-s-so, Sen Ta’rine is a, err, a big place?” Dollop asked.
“It be the most prodigious metropolis this side o’ the Ettalye,” Mr. Pynch said. “A city of endless possibilities.”
“So endless they got human grub?” Micah wondered.
“The Living City has it all, Master Micah.”
“Th-that means there’s all k-k-kinds of mehkies there?”
“It be an epicenter of mehkan activity bursting at the seams. Folks flock there from far and wide. More tchurbs and jaislids than you’d ever care to see in one place, to be candid-like. Why do you ask, Sir Dollop?”
“Oh, I—I was hoping that…Well, I th-thought…You know, maybe I might find my—my clan there, and whatnot.”
Mr. Pynch scratched his bristly cheek. “Yes indeedy, I had almost forgotten. Fret not, me tender mehkie. I’ll keep an eye wandering for one of yer ilk. Don’t think I’d pass ’em over. Yer assemblage be rather…memorable.”
“R-really?” Dollop asked brightly.
“Indubitably. And if yer kind habitate anywhere, it be most assuredly in Sen Ta’rine.” His words lit up Dollop’s face.
“See?” Micah said. “Things are lookin’ up.”
Dollop bounced with joy, his parts joining and separating with each step.
“Mr. Pynch,” Phoebe began, “I’ve been thinking. I know it’s a lot to ask, but how would…I mean, even though it’s dangerous, would you be willing to—”
“You want me assistance in secreting you into the Citadel,” he said without turning back to them. “Figured you’d pose the inquiry eventually.”
“We’ll pay you, of course,” she offered.
“With what?” Mr. Pynch probed.
Micah looked down at his Lodestar. Phoebe plucked the hem of her skirt.
“You don’t fully cognizate what you be asking.”
Was that fear she could hear in his syrupy, rumbling voice?
“It be surrounded by dead lands swarming with ravenous hivelings, and the Foundry patrols every forsaken inch of it with all manner of sentineling abominations. The Citadel itself bears an impassable bulwark of one hundred and nine spires, one for each sun in the celestial ring, converging at a deadly peak to symbolize the fusion. The spires be riddled with befuddling passages from which there be no exit. Once you enter, you be destined to rust therein.”
Phoebe bit her lip.
“So,” Micah said, “is that a yes?”
“I know it’s crazy,” she said. “But my father is there, so I have to get in somehow. I don’t have a choice.”
“We don’t have a choice,” insisted Micah.
“R-r-right,” Dollop chimed insecurely.
“I…�
�� Mr. Pynch began. He looked at their eager faces. “I may or may not have some acquaintances. Business-mehkies like meself in Sen Ta’rine, who specialize in such manners of trespasserous knowledge.” Phoebe broke into a smile.
“Now we’re gettin’ somewhere!” Micah hooted.
“But I make no promises,” Mr. Pynch stated. “I never do.”
“As for the payment…” Phoebe started.
“I’ll put it on yer tab,” he muttered resentfully.
The group continued on, and Phoebe felt her confidence grow. Her hunger and thirst were worsening, but she trained her focus on every next step, and time passed more quickly than she had expected. She was so close now.
Up ahead, something dangled from the ceiling, the first variation they had seen to the smooth, rippled surfaces. It was a jumble of striated bronze tubes covered in wiry hairs, overflowing from the walls in a convoluted knot.
“Roots. An excellent prospect.” Mr. Pynch beamed.
The Marquis’s familiar opticle light came bobbing through the channel. Mr. Pynch barked at him in Rattletrap, and the Marquis feigned innocence. But the fat mehkan prodded his partner, who finally returned the stolen necktie.
“Come!” Mr. Pynch rumbled, securing his silky green accessory. “Sen Ta’rine awaits.”
As the Marquis led them through more winding tunnels, the protruding ducts became thicker and more frequent. After a while, he switched his light to purple and scanned the walls for white plasms until he found the right one.
“Intermit here while I ensure the way be secured,” said Mr. Pynch before slipping through the plasm. The others were left to wait for a quiet, nervous moment. Then Mr. Pynch’s arm poked back through and gestured for them to follow.
Phoebe took a deep breath and dove in first.
She emerged into another vaulted mountain base, similar to the area where they had fought the Watchmen. But whereas that one had been wild and overgrown, this space was carefully maintained. The trimmed walls pressed in on all sides like sweeping hedges. High above them, the ceiling was formed entirely from a branching system of bronze ducts, which budded with luminous honey-colored globes. And spilling in from the corner up ahead was a roaring commotion she couldn’t quite place, a churning and clamoring thrum.
The others squished through the plasm behind her. The Marquis extracted a device from a hiding place in the wall of bluish growth, some kind of a weird mehkan wheelbarrow. There was a driving mechanism in the rear, a U-shaped cradle layered with organic gears and levers that connected to a tiered yoke. The enclosed bucket at the front was a wrinkled pod like a giant iron walnut shell. Balanced beneath it was a gelatinous wheel, as if the entire compartment were resting on a large ball of mercury.
“Brilliant!” Mr. Pynch brayed. “An awlegg’s tilbury. Quite the commensurate solution.”
The Marquis swept off his hat and bowed.
“Solution…to what?” Micah asked.
“Why, to smuggle you into the city,” stated Mr. Pynch. He grabbed ahold of the steering mechanism, ratcheted a crank, and the top of the bucket hinged open. “Best hasten. Pop yerselves in before we draw any curious passersby.”
Phoebe and Micah climbed into the tilbury. The floor was scattered with pebbles and dust, but the base was wide enough for them to both sit comfortably.
“Limbs and digits all retractored?” called Mr. Pynch.
“Ready to roll,” Micah called back.
Dollop waved to them as the lid clanged shut. The kids’ ears rang within the dark echoing confines, and they had to stoop to avoid bumping their heads. The seal around its perimeter was uneven, so they had a few horizontal slivers to peer out of. Through a crack, the kids saw Mr. Pynch and the Marquis, each working one end of the U-shaped driving mechanism.
The tilbury jostled as the mehkans started to push it, although for such a ramshackle device, Phoebe was amazed by its fluidity. The ride was nearly as smooth as that of Tennyson’s beloved Baronet.
As they wound around the corner, the light grew brighter and the noise intensified. The kids looked ahead through the cracks. They both gasped.
It was a roaring current of mehkans.
From their peepholes, they could only catch fleeting glimpses of a clattering blur. Creatures galloped and rolled, chugged and flew, even squirmed past in a vigorous tide. A dozen identical mehkans like black starfish spun across the walls using suction pads on their feet. A flopping hinged creature swung overhead, collapsing end over end. A pair of steel wool–covered tripods bumped against the tilbury as they loped past on spring-loaded legs. Snippets of Rattletrap were everywhere, along with sloshes, moans, and whistles.
They heard Dollop’s chirp among them as he wove through the crowd, exuberantly greeting mehkans. He leaned close to the tilbury and peeked in.
“Everyth-thing ok-k-kay in there?”
“Get back!” Micah hissed.
“Don’t draw any attention to us,” Phoebe said urgently.
“Oh r-r-right, I f-forgot,” Dollop said, trying very hard to look nonchalant.
Other tunnels merged, and mehkans surged all around them, pushing and bumping up on all sides. They heard Mr. Pynch growl and peeked back to find him popping out his spines to ward off those that got too close.
Without warning, light streamed in through the seams of the tilbury. The kids snapped back from the little openings, momentarily blinded.
“Feast yer peepers on the Living City!” Mr. Pynch cried.
Albright City was the capital of all Meridian. Some called it the most spectacular city in the world. Phoebe had spent her entire life there and knew of nothing that rivaled its majesty or scale. That was before Sen Ta’rine.
Stretching so tall the kids couldn’t even see the tops, hundreds of honey-bronze towers dwarfed even the Vo-Pykaron Mountains that flanked them. The skyscrapers looked like cactuses, with vertical shoots bending up from every side—structures growing up and out of other structures. Whereas Albright City exhibited symmetry, straight lines and right angles, Sen Ta’rine was the opposite. There wasn’t a parallel line in sight. Baffling shapes and undulating ridges separated the stacked floors, wavy lips formed balconies, and parapets jutted up at unexpected angles.
Thousands of mehkans populated honeycomb chambers and navigated the ledges. In some places, strips of the outer walls curved away like banana peels to form runways that connected one tower to the next. Mehkans traveled across these bridges using some sort of transit the kids couldn’t make out.
It all looked too precarious to stand, and yet somehow it did. The towers swayed gently, like oaks in a summer breeze. Phoebe thought back to the bronze ducts they had seen below—Mr. Pynch had called them roots.
Sen Ta’rine truly was the Living City.
Mehkans were zipping in such a flurry that it was impossible to tell which were creatures and which were vehicles. She wondered where they were headed. Were they going home or racing to their jobs? Did they even have jobs? Did these growing buildings contain libraries or restaurants or hospitals?
Phoebe wanted to touch those buildings, to climb to the highest point and coast through the city on whatever transport was crossing overhead.
Dollop squealed and sprinted through the crowd. He plucked off his hands, stuck them on his head, and hobbled clumsily on four short limbs. Then he squeaked again and stacked his pieces so he wobbled on teetering stilts. Dollop was looking for a resemblance to every mehkan that passed, mimicking them and trying to engage. But the pedestrians just brushed him off, annoyed.
With one arm dangling from his rear end like a tail, he slunk back.
“I j-just thought…You know, maybe…Oh, w-w-wait!”
Then he was off again.
“Poor little sop,” Mr. Pynch muttered. “Perhaps he’s got no one after all.”
“He’s got us,” Phoebe said firmly.
&
nbsp; “Darn tootin’!” agreed Micah.
The tilbury diverted off the main path and rolled across a raised band of walkway. Off to the side were new growths poking up through bluish ore muck, an organized cluster of bronze sprouts only a few yards high. There were filth-spattered mehkans hunched over and ambling slowly around. A long appendage grew from each of their heads like the proboscis of a butterfly, tipped with gleaming thresher blades. They tended to the buds, doting over their shining surfaces and carefully shaping them.
This was a garden of new buildings, Phoebe realized.
Flat mehkans with serrated bodies were scuttling across a nearby skyscraper, gyrating their carapaces back and forth like jigsaws to carve honey-colored swaths from the skin of the structure. Braying, bulbous mehkans hauled away the bronze cuttings—their speckled bodies and sharp, stubby fins were darkly reminiscent of Zip Trolleys.
The hurried pulse of the city faded as the walkway descended into another cluttered thicket of buildings. These were unrelentingly gray, their tattered skyline blocking out the suns. The facades were shriveled, and gaping holes had been gnawed through their skins. Some of the structures were splintered or limbless, and others were skeletal ruins threatening to collapse. Eroding rust caked the creaking buildings and littered walkways.
“What is this place?” Phoebe whispered.
“Folks call it the Heap,” gritted Mr. Pynch. “Where all the mehkan scraps and detritus be relegated to.”
There were packs of battered, grimy creatures huddled on corners. Some chattered in Rattletrap wheezes, while others shouted and slurred drunkenly. Sunken, haunted faces peered out of hovels that were precariously balanced in teetering stacks. Curled bodies lay beneath sheet-metal lean-tos, while mehkan children screeched and played in a dump of rusted building clippings.
Dollop hopped from group to despondent group, reforming his limbs to imitate each in turn. A familiar shape hobbled out of the shadows—a chraida limping on a cable-bound crutch with a ragged stump where one of his legs should have been. He spat and clutched at the golden dynamo on Dollop’s chest. The hapless mehkan registered the danger of his situation with a jolt, but a mangy mob surrounded him, cackling and pawing and closing in.
The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge Page 24