MacNess pulled out a copy of the Guild Bylaws from some pocket in his robe, little tiny thick book looks like those pocket Constitutions senators carry around to pretend they’ve read the thing. He flipped through the pages with a thumb to check my work. “One-hundred and four,” he finally whispered.
“Close enough it won’t go boom at least, huh? Just fizzle a little,” I said, happy to be unnerving them.
Massey snorted in contempt. “To think what you threw away by spurning this Brotherhood.”
“To think what you’ve thrown away by not facing Anima Madness as a solvable problem,” I shot back.
“Had great success at curing it, have you?”
“Not as such,” I admitted, “but at least I’m trying.”
“We are stability, Artificer Price,” Massey told me smugly, “that is our duty; that is the Call of the Earth. We uphold the old ways; we continue to grease the wheels of civilization. We give to the people desperately needed tools of power to make their everyday lives easier, to protect them, even to empower them. We keep watch over the worst of them, so the distraught few may not harm the many. We know what the people are, the terrors they face, but we do not judge them, we do not change them, above all else we do not offer them false hopes. The Guild of Artificers is a force of reality, not of fantasy.”
Until the dwarves show up . . . then the brown in your robes ain’t so much dye as you shitting your pants about how real ‘fantasy’ is, I thought to myself. Couldn’t say that one aloud. Not yet.
Maybe one day.
[CLICK]
The elevator opened into an empty, largely unfurnished room. Ceramic tiles on the ground, walls, and ceiling. The kind of room you expected got washed free of blood, puke, and shit pretty often, pick your bodily fluid of choice.
There was a single geomancer inside, not in the Guild’s brown robe, but an equally brown, gold-trimmed uniform. He was the kind of geomancer that went towards big and bulky, reminded me of the Eriksons, except less bully and more prison guard. His only weapon was a metal blackjack rod. Old fashioned skull-bashing stuff. The uniform had the name Sean Watson stenciled on it, over the rank of Master Guard. Guess the Intras need something to do, might as well let them watch the prisoners in the Pit.
Only Massey and MacNess exited the elevator along with my golem escort, the graybeards reminded behind. “Keep the beer flowing and the whining to a minimum if at all possible, my friends,” Massey told them before the elevator shut.
Master Watson stood at attention.
Fuck, why couldn’t he be named Bates?
Might be the one leading her around this time, but Fate would never give me a joke that easy, even if I got her cuffed with the electric nipple clamps applied. What? She’s the Bitch-Queen! She’s into some freaky shit! Especially pegging . . . especially with horse-shaped dildos. Ribbed for his grunting ‘oh my!’
Massey motioned towards a table in front of Watson, where a lockbox and a stack of forms waited. “I declared to the ESLED agents that I wouldn’t seize your property, Artificer Price, but I did not agree to allow possible weapons into the Cleansing Sphere of Reform.” Cleansing Sphere of Reform being the bullshit 1800s name they came up with for the Pit, which no one but officials or prudes call it by, just like the Asylum.
“This is bullshit, Massey.”
“Time for you to declare your property for study, Artificer Price, or I will have them strip you naked and searched thoroughly,” the Guild Master threatened. “No doubt some of those artifacts will be safe for you to keep even in the prison, but those too must but studied until verified, mustn’t they?”
I glanced at the table, the lockbox, and Watson. No help there. Behind my back, Massey and MacNess both put on their own Anima Detection Lenses, Guild standard issue for MacNess, an ancient passed-down-job for Massey, being how much the Masseys had bred true as mancers over the years.
If I just gave in they’d be suspicious, if I held off too long they would search my ass. Literally. Might even make it through a search, can’t be sure, still haven’t figured out the security features. Hell of risk to take though. These were Artificers just like me, might not work. Close enough to be like me . . . I think. It was a risk, everything I’d worked for would be decided in how the next few minutes played out. Part of me just wanted to know, have it out in the open. Six months down the drain or six months good to go for the final phase. Still, needed some resistance, need to play the prop, play Massey’s ego. “Guess the Guild will be really happy when you announce all the new artifacts you’ve miraculously discovered, won’t they?”
“You could always join us as you were meant to,” MacNess pointed out, not unkindly. “All this would be finished. No prison, no hearing. Given your skill, you’ll pass as a Full Member in Artifice within a month. Any of these experimental designs will go in your book, you will win a creator’s percentage on them, and upon review from your fellow Brothers you could be nominated for an Inventor badge.”
Massey didn’t like this, pursing his lips thinner than even his smile. “Artificer Price has never heard the word ‘reasonable.’ Even Ceinwyn Dale has learned that truth, but not him.”
Poking me to manipulate my reaction how he wants. Maybe there’s some defiance alive in the Guild after all. Still, them eyes counted out grains of sand, tick-tocking their way as they dreamed of humiliating me with a strip-search. “Maybe after a day in your Pit. Come all this way, might as well get a ride in on the Matterhorn.”
SDR, One Second Blade—
“One at a time, please!” Watson finally spoke.
“Guess we’ll be here awhile then . . .” I grumbled, taking the brass knuckle shaped One Second Blade back into my hand.
One by one they went on the table, starting with the SDR. Watson pulled a camera out of his ass to take pictures, MacNess filled out the forms, Massey clucked and whispered to himself over my designs, very often negatively.
The SDR was quickly placed in the lockbox, not long studied, likely because the Guild had already tried to reverse engineer what I had done and went a different route. Theirs were prettier, with spectro-crystals and gold bands, mine were far cheaper. MacNess asked me for a small description of the rest.
One Second Blade predictably joined the SDR in the lockbox, the Magic Wand I was allowed to keep, my Anima Detection Lenses caused a furious response from Massey on where I’d gotten them. “Made them like all the rest,” I told him.
“This is our design! Crafted by an amateur, but our design!”
Gave him an I-don’t-give-a-crap shrug. “Ain’t so bad working with criminals on occasion.”
“This is stolen property!”
Another shrug. “You started it . . . and it’s not like I plan on selling them to customers.” Just planning to gift them to my friends one day. If only they didn’t cost so much to make I’d do it tomorrow.
Massey fumed like a five-year-old told he couldn’t have ice cream for dinner, but eventually handed them back.
They treated the Necklace of Confusion like it was a bomb, most likely because the idea that something existed capable of countering their Lenses scared the shit out of them. The Lenses were one of the bedrocks of the Guild catalog. Massey was very careful to describe what he saw in the artifact to MacNess. They took a long time with it, but the Necklace not being a weapon, they were forced to return it under their own rules.
“Last one,” I announced as I pulled out Poug’s glass-metal knife from under my coat.
“Surely there must be more,” Massey sneered over the knife’s hilt. “I’ve been told you can barely move sometimes you wear so many artifacts.”
“Old days, yeah, others days maybe too. But give me some credit: I knew you might try this shit.”
Massey glanced at my geomancer’s coat covetously.
“You want the rest of what I’ve designed, you’ll have to win me over to join the Guild,” I warned him.
A sniff of disdain. “You will beg me by the end of this hearing,
Artificer Price.”
“Guess we’ll see, won’t we?”
Massey pulled the knife out of its sheath. He stopped, frozen solid in shock. “Thirteen anima types,” he whispered. “Glass that isn’t glass . . .” He tried to bend the blade. “This can’t be!”
MacNess frowned as he leaned closer to Massey, who was flipping the knife back and forth like that might change what it was. “The anima inside of it is quite fine, obviously master workmanship, but I can’t make out its purpose. It’s a very strange weave . . . does it pull something?”
Massey didn’t bother to answer him, but turned back to me. “Where did you get this?!? There are only two of these in private hands! The Vampire Embassies have confiscated the rest, one after another! Only the Roots and Welfs have kept theirs! Even Fines Samson didn’t have one in his private collection!”
“Stole it from the Curator,” I gave the same lie as always.
Massey sheathed the blade, clutching it to his chest. “No . . . that could mean, but even now, you have it and that is still intolerable!”
“What is its function?” MacNess asked. Watson knew enough to keep his mouth shut.
“It’s an Elven Blade . . . a legend in my hands, from a time before our histories are even close to accurate, from a time we don’t recall . . .” Massey went silent as he realized I was still in the room. He clutched Poug’s dagger even tighter.
“Make a deal with you, Massey,” I told him. “If you win and I’m censured by the Guild, I’ll give it to you.”
Eyes the color of hourglass sand brightened like Christmas had come early. “And if I lose?”
“You stop the bullshit and stop undermining me. Further, you give me access to the Guild catalog design documents. Maybe I even feel magnanimous and agree to share what improvements I come up with,” I tried, knowing he would never go for that.
“No . . .” he whispered. “You’ll never escape without being censured but if they hear I ever risked that, even for an Elven Blade . . . no.”
I grinned some canines. “Got another idea: how about if I escape this hearing without censure, what say you resign as Guild Master?”
Massey’s answering smile was the smile of a man holding a pair of aces with six or seven more stuffed up his sleeves. “A good deal, Artificer Price,” he purred, “and I accept. You’re the witness, Ulysses, and now you have even more reason to truly make this experience a misery for our guest.”
Poug’s glass-metal dagger was placed in the lockbox, which was shut, the key turned and handed over to me. “Master Guard Watson and the security golems will lead you the rest of the way, Artificer Price, this lockbox will never leave your rooms, but if it is broken open then the items inside will be forfeit to the Guild. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand a whole lot,” I finally let myself snarl.
Massey’s smile was thin enough to be invisible. “Please enjoy your stay inside the Cleansing Sphere of Reform, Artificer Price.”
Session 165
My apartments in the Cleansing Sphere of Reform, a.k.a The Pit, a.k.a. my home for the foreseeable future, weren’t in the “pit” part of the structure, but up above on the top half of the sphere. Up there was mostly housing for the employees, storage, water reclamation, sewage, all the usual bureaucracy and infrastructure on the opposite side of the cage bars. If the documents that the Tsar provided me with were accurate, then they even had multiple elevators staff could use to ascend up to London, not nearly as ceremonial or as inefficient as the one that brought me directly through the You Dun Fucked Up Lennie entrance.
Considering the Pit has only had one successful breakout in the last two centuries, the Guild of Artificers took it as internally impregnable. Once you were in the Pit, you weren’t leaving until someone let you out. Even then, Isabel’s breakout wasn’t seen as a prisoner escape, but as external forces acting upon the pristine design. Guards and doctors responsible for her care and in contact with her were terminated without question—problem solved. Everything was perfectly fine now, no problem at all.
Stop talking about the problem, bitch!
The usual corporate reaction to a flawed system: please ignore the sinking oil platform, we promise your shrimp cocktails will be unaffected, yes, they’re meant to have that rainbow sheen and the two heads.
Good for me.
Bad for the Guild.
Not that they’d ever be able to prepare for a plan this crazy.
Only King Henry Price takes desperation to beyond the Secret Cow Level.
Ain’t desperation, just determination. Sick of that cold abyss in my stomach when I start thinking about all the lies and bullshit and what might be out in that void of ignorance watching me from the shadows. Sick of being told to stay silent and to wait my turn. Sick of having my future marked out by those in the know.
Watson, with the two golems in tow, led me down a second elevator. About five seconds after it activated, my anima pool got blasted right out of my body. Felt like someone had stabbed me in the gut. Think I actually grunted from the pain.
Watson’s reaction was sympathetic, with just a tinge of cynicism. “Now you know why the Guild Master didn’t join you for the rest of the journey, don’t ya?”
Maybe twenty-five seconds later I felt the same blast of ultra heavy, condensed geo-anima ripping towards me in a wave, up through the floor and leaving out the ceiling of the elevator. Twenty-five seconds, much slower than the version in the Holding Room. But a whole lot more frightening given the size, scope, and power of the blast.
“Don’t you worry it’s frying your sperm or something?” I asked Watson.
“Like surfing I imagine: get used to the wave coming, still a big wave,” was his opinion on the matter. No . . . I am not sure what his point was. Forget his mutated sperm; it might have fried his brain.
“Golems seem fine,” I tried again. Neither of the lumbering monsters had even moved when blasted. Just kept bubbling away in their glass hearts, strands of natural geo-anima stretching out to touch at control points in the metal and stone that made up their hulking arms and legs.
“Not their kind of anima, is it?” Watson pointed out. “Don’t they teach you anything in America?”
“You ain’t a Brit . . . not enough ‘cunt’ talk for an Aussie. Canadian?” I decided. “Came back here to England to learn, like the British Empire days.”
“Her Royal Majesty’s Conservatory of the Elements,” Watson spewed the name out proudly, “Longest standing elemental school on the planet. Might not be as big as your Institution, but it does get the job done. Always thought we had a lot more fun since we had our rivalries with the Continentals and the United Elementalists. You just had to play with each other, but I do hear that Winter War thingy is worth seeing at least once in your lifetime.”
“And here I thought we weren’t gonna be friends.”
Watson gave me a knowing smile. “I’ll smash you over the head if you try anything, but like the bosses said: you aren’t a prisoner, are you? Ran afoul of the men upstairs, politics and all that, but I heard about the way you fought that Sapa fellow. Makes you decent enough in my book as long as you don’t cause me problems. Besides, not often I get to talk to a guest of this place who can still form whole sentences, is it? Pit might take the anima out of them, but it only halts the Madness, it doesn’t stop it. Leads to a good bit of screaming and blabbering. Though after awhile you do start to understand what they’re trying to get across, even if it’s about invisible demons no one else can see.”
“There are still murderers and the like though, right? Won’t call them normal, but I wouldn’t call them insane either.”
“Sure there are,” Watson said enthusiastically, “had a hydromancer miss from Italy come through here last week. Started drowning tourists, believe that? She pled guilty straight away and when they asked her why she did it, she said she couldn’t stop herself once she started. Killed thirty people before they found her out. Local mundanes starting th
inking it might be a great white shark.”
“I take back my assumption on the sanity of serial killers,” was all I could think to say.
“Don’t worry, Artificer, you’ll only see the likes of her on the common floor, rest of the time you’ll be up here nice and cozy, and seems like the two big bastards won’t leave your side. Everyone knows better than to tussle with a security golem in the Cleansing Sphere. Only need to see them in action once to realize you’ll be pulverized before you even get a punch in, not that a punch will do much to stone or steel without any anima helping out.”
The elevator stopped.
The floor we arrived on was so unused that Watson had to turn on the lights for the hallway. The walls were six inches thick, steel plates at the center of them. Would need something stronger than dynamite to blast through. It’s fucking weird trying to feel anima around you with that wave ripping by. Was disorientating. Didn’t think of it as surfing or as waves, more like trying to see writing on the ground, with a cloud passing overhead every few seconds blocking out the light of the sun.
Makes your eyes start to go cross and gives you a headache. And they say this place keeps people sane . . .
“You get the best room, being as you’re the only residing hostage as it were. Used to save this room for generals and dukes, even kings on occasion. Don’t tell any of them upstairs, but a few of us have taken to sneaking a girl from the kitchens or one of the nurses down here. Nicer to have an unused bed than some janitor closet!”
“Both always worked for me,” was my only comment on the matter. Janitor closets . . . used to make me think of Val, now it makes me think of Isabel. Guess one of the few pluses of being in here is that it’s the one place she’ll never return to.
Lucky, lucky King Henry.
The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6) Page 10