by Beth Cato
“Wow,” Rivka said, leaning closer to a display.
Fifty years had passed since Caskentia’s Golden Age, and near-constant wars had retarded its development. Not so in the progressive southern city-states. Tamarania boasted well-kept tramways, airship buses between the metropolitan islands, even pneumatic tubes for communication within its towers.
Once Rivka was caught up with her academic work, she needed to find an apprenticeship. Tamarania abounded with masters of mechanical crafts, and Mr. Cody likely employed the best of the best. That was evident by the limbs in this room.
“My brother has a mechanical leg. I’ve never . . . really seen what it looks like inside.” Tatiana was clearly rattled.
Rivka pulled herself away from the enrapturing displays. “I wonder what else is around here?” She looked sidelong at Tatiana. Despite her squeamishness, Tatiana didn’t seem eager to go back to the party. How long had it been since Rivka had mucked about with anyone near her own age? The companionship felt . . . odd, but pleasant.
There were three more trophy rooms with limbs on display. Several other doors were locked. According to hallway signs, they contained valuable things like crystals to power mechanical limbs and silver scraps.
“Odd. The silver is locked up, but parts with integrated gold are only kept behind glass,” said Rivka.
“Mr. Cody created gremlins. If any got loose inside . . .” Tatiana shrugged. “Gremlins love silver.”
“Oh. I never had gremlins around. I’ve never even seen one up close.” Not like her part of Mercia had much silver for gremlins to steal.
The end of the hall had another locked door, this one also secured by an alarm system. Rivka couldn’t resist showing off a bit since she had an audience. It took a few minutes to disarm the box. Tatiana didn’t offer any praise, though. She headed straight down the hallway to where an empty lift waited.
“I’ve heard rumors . . .” Tatiana said as she scanned a panel labeled with the floors of the skyscraper. “There! A laboratory in the basement.”
“What’s down there?”
“Let’s find out!” She tilted her head. “This building connects to the Arena next door. I’ve been in that basement with my brother. The machines down there were marvelous.”
If they were caught deep in Mr. Cody’s facility, the consequences could be much more dire than being nagged about an oil-stained dress, but Rivka was enjoying this far more than that horrid party. There was science to be found. She cranked the cage doors shut behind them. Tatiana managed the button panel. The lift rumbled as it descended from the fourth floor.
Rivka recalled why she wanted to speak with Tatiana in the first place. “When you were in the Arena basement, was Octavia Leander with you?”
“Yes.” She scowled. “I don’t like her.”
“How can you not like her?” To Rivka, that sounded as plausible as hating chocolate.
“I barely get to see Alonzo. He left right away because of her.” Tatiana’s voice faded, then she shook herself out of it. “You heard what Mr. Cody said. I shipped Miss Leander to Mercia. I knew my mother was really sick and that Miss Leander would help. She did.”
“But you still say you don’t like her?”
“I used to hate her. Now . . . I don’t know.” Tatiana shrugged, facing away. “So how did you meet her?”
Through the gilt cage, each floor blurred by. What could Rivka really say? Miss Leander’s mission in Mercia wasn’t something she could talk about.
“Miss Leander changed my life,” Rivka said. “I thought . . . I thought I was an orphan. I didn’t know I had a grandmother or aunt or baby cousin.” Or great-grandfather, though the thought of him always brought tears to Rivka’s eyes. Miss Leander had recognized their familial connections through the power of her magic. “Now I live with my grandmother, Mrs. Viola Stout.”
The lift came to a gentle stop. Together, they cranked open the cage doors.
Belowground, it was strangely cold. The walls were brick whitewashed in lime. She clutched her thin cardigan to her ribs. A strange sound carried from close by. Whining, crying, at various octaves. Rivka’s sense of unease grew as the cacophony increased, but when Tatiana opened the next door, she didn’t hesitate to walk forward.
At least a hundred cages stacked three levels high and extended around a rectangular room of some thirty feet. Little green bodies were inside, tiny limbs flailing through the bars. The smell struck her as strange and wild, with a whiff almost like the chemical vapors of aether enchantments.
“Are those . . . gremlins?” asked Rivka.
CHAPTER 2
“Yes. Gremlins. My God, they are ugly,” said Tatiana, shuddering. She had to speak loudly to be heard.
The creatures mewed, cackled, and banged on the copper and wood bars of their enclosures. Nothing was made of silver. Rivka stepped closer.
The bright electric lighting showed the green gremlins well. Some had tint variations, like patches in a quilt. Their sizes ranged from pigeon to husky tomcat. Long, bat-like wings folded along their sides. Hideous hybrid faces featured round, black eyes, some of their noses compressed and others more elongated. Their arms tended toward long and skinny, hind legs stubby.
Gremlins had split lips, just like her.
Rivka traced her upper lip with her tongue. Doctors in Tamarania could fill the gap that partially exposed her front teeth. She was slowly saving up money for that very surgery.
“Hi there.” Rivka reached out. A gremlin’s three small fingers clutched her fingertips. There were no claws, nor did it try to lurch her off balance. The little gremlin pressed its face to the bars. Long, whiskered ears trembled. Rivka felt a vibration against her hand, and with a start realized that the creature was purring.
“A lot of them—no, all of them—are injured.” Tatiana pointed.
She was right. The gremlin whose hand Rivka held had bandages girthing most of its torso. The one to the left had no ear, just a rounded stub. The one below had no wings, and therefore, no arms. A cage over, the gremlin actually had separate arms, but its wings were gone as well.
“Is this like a medical ward for maimed gremlins?” Rivka frowned and looked around as she wiggled her hand free. It certainly seemed like a sterile surgical space. She pulled out her trusty little screwdriver again.
“What are you doing?”
“Being nosy. There has to be a ledger or something around here that chronicles their injuries.”
The cages were numbered and denoted with colorful flags; not all were occupied. Most of the cabinets and drawers held tools and blades with purposes she didn’t wish to contemplate. No paperwork had been left out. She pulled a cart from beneath a steel table. Lifting the hinged lid, she found a snarled pile of dead gremlins. She gasped.
“What?” called Tatiana from across the room.
“Bodies.” Rivka shoved the cart away. She’d seen all kinds of dead things before, people included, but there was something especially disturbing about a haphazard knot of that nature.
Oddly enough, there had been no smell, but the handle had been warm to the touch. There must have been some kind of sanitation enchantment in place. Even so, she wiped her fingers against her skirt.
“Well, they wouldn’t be able to save all of them,” said Tatiana, quite matter-of-fact.
Rivka reached toward another living gremlin. A yellow flag adorned its cage along with a number fifty-three. The gremlin’s little hand gripped her fingers against the bars as its mouth parted in a sound that she couldn’t hear above the cacophony. She took comfort in the touch. This gremlin looked healthy, even if it lacked both wings. Maybe it wouldn’t end up in that horrid cart.
Tatiana walked toward another open doorway. Rivka wiggled her fingers. The gremlin reluctantly let go.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She felt its unblinking s
crutiny as she walked around a large, steel table.
The next chamber was huge, the ceiling high. Shelves of books and storage receptacles lined the gray-brick walls. A circle of copper was inlaid in the tile floor. The copper itself was about three inches in width, flat on the floor, the circle extending some twenty feet. In the middle, thick chains were bolted to the floor and over a massive lump of dark blankets. Blankets that moved, rising and lowering like a person slumbering.
Tatiana walked forward, her eyes wide. “This is a medician’s circle. I didn’t know they could be made this big.”
“I thought Tamarans didn’t like magic? Isn’t it considered old-fashioned?” Rivka asked. “And what is that in the middle?”
“Most Tamarans hate magic, yes. Not Mr. Cody. He’s obsessed with the subject. It’s why my brother and Miss Leander ended up working with him. That thing . . . Mr. Cody is making a new big chimera for the Arena.” Her eyes sparkled. “That’s exactly what I hoped to find!”
“A big chimera for the Arena? Why?” The sport of Warriors in the Arena featured jockeyed mechanical creatures that fought for the top of a fake mountain. It was based on a tabletop game found in most taverns though those mechas were about the size of a hand. Mr. Stout had often bet on matches, big and small.
“You’ve been here for months. Don’t you know anything?” Tatiana rolled her eyes. “All gremlins are chimeras. Mr. Cody originally made them from bits of other animals, but now they breed on their own. Well, a few months ago, he debuted a new creation for an Arena bout. It was part gremlin, but huge, with metal legs, arms, and wings. No one had seen the like before. My brother rode it in the Arena. He and Miss Leander named it ‘Chi.’ He rode away on Chi, too, when he went north.”
“That’s why Mr. Cody is mad at you.”
“Yes, well. He’d be better off blaming Miss Leander.” Tatiana stood a little straighter. “For some reason, the chimera really liked Miss Leander and Alonzo. And the Arena crowd loved the whole exhibition. Mechas in the Arena are rigged to blast fire or fly or shoot grappling hooks, all controlled by the jockey. Alonzo and the chimera worked together as an intelligent team. It was glorious.” Her dark skin held a rosy, excited glow. “Since Mr. Cody really is making a new one, I need to talk to him again. I can be extra nice . . .”
“Talk to him about what?” asked Rivka.
Tatiana shrugged away the question as she held a hand toward the copper circle. “Feel that?”
Rivka repeated the motion. Her fingers penetrated an invisible wall that felt like hot, sticky spiderwebs. Unpleasant, certainly, but nothing like the enchantment she had crossed in Mercia with Miss Leander. Frowning to herself, Rivka walked over the copper line.
Warmth tingled across her face, as if she leaned close to a fire after being in a bitter wind. A tiny pop rang in both ears. Ahead of her, the bundle of blankets shifted, the top layer shedding onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” squealed Tatiana. “Can you even get out?”
Good grief, what was Rivka doing? She stuck her arm out behind her and had the same warm sensation travel over her skin.
“I’m not stuck. I think the magic is only set to contain . . . that.”
“Chi killed men! Mr. Cody said so. That’s why its attachment to Miss Leander and Alonzo was so strange.”
“Oh. Well, this one is chained down. I don’t think it can reach me.” Rivka forced herself to sound nonchalant. She could easily retreat across the barrier again but remained still. The little gremlins had reacted to her with desperation and yearning. What if this creature was the same?
In the middle of the circle, the last of the blankets slithered to the floor to reveal green skin and a long, knobby ridge of spine. The beast had to be almost ten feet long. Within the constraint of chains, the body flipped with a coil of muscle. It had no extremities, only stubs where they should be. Seams and welts of stitch marks lined its skin. This creature was cobbled together with flesh, just as Mama used to mend and re-create Rivka’s tattered clothes.
She sucked in a breath. “The dead gremlins. That’s why their bodies are being preserved in the cart. They use them to make this big chimera.”
Were the gremlins injured before they arrived in the laboratory, or were they simply there for harvest? That was the end result, certainly. Their corpses were made . . . useful in this new creation for the sake of entertainment. The sort of violent spectacle that would have delighted Mr. Stout even if he lost a month’s bakery profits to his bookmaker.
The wrongness of it all caused her fists to clench at her hips.
The huge chimera’s head resembled that of smaller gremlins. Eyes were the size of round scones, black as a Waster’s soul. The flesh of the brow puckered, an expression of pain. The ears looked short, unfinished. Its lips parted to reveal long teeth as it mewed like cats she had known back home, only ten times louder.
Rivka stepped closer.
“What are you doing?” hissed Tatiana.
“Look at its eyes. It’s hurting.” It was born of suffering, formed of creatures whose bodies lay in a naked tangle in wait of this new life.
“Are you daft? It’s a beast for the Arena. It’s supposed to tear apart machines. It can kill people.”
“It can barely move. Look at these chains.” Rivka approached in measured steps, a hand outstretched.
“It has teeth. It’ll bite your arm off. One gulp. Or roll onto you, break all your bones—”
“Will you kindly shut up? I think the tone of your voice is bothering it.”
“The tone of my . . . !”
The creature’s short ears twitched as it glanced between them.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Rivka murmured. “I want to check on you, that’s all. Probably one of the stupidest things I’ve done, but it strikes me as something Octavia Leander would do. But then, she’s a medician. Wait. Did you recognize her name? Do you know Miss Leander?” Each time Rivka repeated the name, the chimera’s entire expression brightened.
She touched the top of the chimera’s head, the broad span between its long ears. The flesh was smooth yet wrinkled, warm and lightly bristled. She gave a couple of quick strokes. The creature’s expression transitioned from shock to squint-eyed bliss. An unmistakable purr rumbled through her hand.
The sound of voices carried into the chamber. Rivka turned and sprinted back through the warm veil of the circle.
“Here!” hissed Tatiana. She dragged Rivka behind a wall of crates. Behind them were shelves lined with old hardcover books and clear jars arrayed with a rainbow of herbs.
Through the gap between crates, they watched a woman enter the room. Her bountiful black hair was constrained by a massive, gold-threaded snood. Like Miss Leander, she wore the white attire of a medician, with its sparkle of cleansing enchantment, but this newcomer had considerably more style. Her robes were accented by gold trim and ruffles. The thick skirt rustled with each step.
“Get the arms ready.” She motioned to unseen people. “Broderick! Get those blankets out of the circle. I told you to stop coddling the beast. It could gnaw on them and choke to death, and I daresay Mr. Cody might gnaw on your bones if anything were to happen at this juncture.”
“I’m sorry, m’lady. I had the sense that it might be cold.” A young man advanced to the edge of the circle. He wore a male version of medician gear, the narrowness of his tunic and trim white trousers revealing his lanky frame.
“Sense or not, it can endure the cold. Or learn to.”
“Yes, m’lady.” He raised a hand as he murmured something into the circle, then lunged forward to grab blankets by the armful. His hair, woven into a multitude of beaded dreadlocks, chimed and lashed against his shoulders. The chimera didn’t move. The green body of the beast, despite its size, looked like a helpless lump in the center of the room. Its worried expression fixated on the woman in w
hite as she opened several valises.
Men in Mr. Cody’s blue livery came straight toward the crates where Rivka and Tatiana hid. The two of them retreated, following the wall around the curve of the room and farther from the door. The men opened a large box.
“Damn. I feel the magic’s heat from here,” muttered one.
“They been praying over these things for weeks. The legs and wings, too. Hours each day.”
“Magic.” One of the workers spat the word and made a slashing gesture of contempt.
“Magic, aye, but I know what I’m placing my bet on next Arena bout.” The fellow jerked his head toward the circle.
Rivka was simultaneously appalled and fascinated. The research, the blueprints, the tools—she’d give anything to see what went into a project of this caliber to combine flesh and machine.
As a team, the men grunted and pulled forth a gleaming copper arm some five feet in length. They carried it into the circle and close to the chimera, then backed off quickly. The chains obviously didn’t make them feel safe. The next arm was pulled out as well.
A new man entered, rolling a cart of his own. He wore a workingman’s suit, his hat dangling from a pole on the cart. He offered a grunt of greeting as he set up shop beside the medician. He had to be the mechanist. Rivka had heard plenty of old soldiers talk about when their new limbs were attached, how it involved a medician and mechanist working in concert.
Her outright giddiness was held in check by the terror on the chimera’s face. She desperately hoped the herbs somehow spared the chimera any pain—surely the medicians would know?
Rivka knew very little about medician magi and the Lady’s Tree they worshipped. The actual Tree was located somewhere in the Waste—there had been a battle there a few months before, with Miss Leander involved—and its ancient magic connected to life all over the land. Circles like the one in the floor were used to concentrate the Lady’s power, and medicians used special herbs to draw on her might to heal.