Clockwork Heart

by Dru Pagliassotti

  “Scrap,” Pyke breathed, shaking his head. “You owe the Lady a couple of candles next holyday, Taya.”

  “I sure do,” Taya murmured, staring.

  “Exalted, if you’ll please follow me, I’ll escort you inside,” a lictor said. “We’ll bring your son to you and semaphore up to Oporphyr Tower to notify your husband.”

  “Very well. We shall speak again, Taya Icarus. House Octavus shall not forget what you have done for it today.” Viera touched one of Taya’s wings before allowing herself to be led away. Taya looked after her, admiring the exalted woman’s élan. After a few thousand rebirths, maybe she’d be that self-possessed after a near-death experience, too.

  “Excuse me,” another lictor said, politely but less deferentially, to Taya and Pyke. “I will now hear your account of this occurrence.” He was tall, pale, and fair-haired— Taya didn’t even need to register his accent to guess he was of Demican descent. However, the black lictor’s stripe tattooed down the right side of his face proved that he was a full citizen of Ondinium.

  “I don’t have much to say.” Taya stripped off her gloves and loosened the top buttons of her flight suit. “I didn’t see anything until I heard the girder giving way.”

  “Interviewing participants is mandatory,” the lictor insisted. “This way, Icarii.”

  “All right,” Taya acquiesced. Arguing with a lictor, especially a Demican lictor, was worse than useless. One of the selection criteria for the caste was stubbornness.

  “You don’t have to interrogate us,” Pyke protested, balking. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Pyke, come on. The sooner we give our statements, the sooner we can get out of here.”

  “This is harassment! We’re innocent— why do we have to be questioned?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “He’s just doing his job. And I’m almost certain that people are never beaten and brainwashed for rescuing exalteds.”

  “You never know,” Pyke said darkly. “Octavus is a decatur.”

  “I know.” Octavus was among the many names she’d memorized while cramming for the diplomatic corps examination. “So?”

  “So, you know what that means.” Pyke gave her a meaningful look. “Council. Do you think it’s coincidence that a wireferry broke while his wife was riding it?”

  “Oh, Lady, not now.” Taya grabbed his arm and pulled him along after her. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “But what if the stripes are in on it?” Pyke objected, digging in his heels. “It could be a military coup. They might decide to get rid of the witnesses.”

  “Pyke. I’m tired, and I have to attend a wedding tonight. Let’s just answer the man’s questions and go, all right?”

  “You’re too trusting,” he growled.

  “Uh-huh.” Several months ago they’d gone out a few times. At first Pyke’s gloomy mistrust of authority had been amusing, but after a few weeks, his conspiracy theories had gotten on her nerves. “I don’t feel particularly threatened by lictors, all right?”

  “Well, they’re probably not as much of a threat as collapsing wireferries,” Pyke admitted. Taya laughed, despite herself, and his eyes warmed.

  Pyke was a skilled flier and a thoughtful friend, and he had all the good intentions a girl could want. Not to mention broad shoulders, a strong chest, and hard muscles in his arms and legs from years of flying. Her best friend, Cassilta, thought she was crazy to cut him loose, but Taya hadn’t been able to take the lectures about corruption and cover-ups. She’d ended the relationship with the reliable “just friends” excuse. To his credit, Pyke had taken the rejection well, and now Cassi regarded him as fair game.

  “If you will please follow me,” the Demican lictor insisted.

  “You were great up there, Taya,” Pyke said as they trailed after the official. “Just wait until the eyrie hears about it.”

  “Not great enough. I think the car clipped one of my feathers.” She craned her neck, but she couldn’t see the tips of her wings without stumbling over her own feet.

  “It’s just a little bent. My uncle can fix it in no time.”

  The lictor led them up a short flight of steps into the nearest guard station, and Pyke waved a dramatic good-bye as they were parted.

  “If you wish to remove your wings, you may,” the Demican lictor said, leading her into a small office. Deciding she deserved a rest, Taya unbuckled the harness straps and swung open the metal keel. Her back prickled as the leather flight suit pulled away from her sweat-covered skin.

  Her ondium armature swayed in the air, its metal wingtips touching the ceiling. Taya frowned as she inspected the feathers. Two primaries were bent out of shape, but Pyke was right. They wouldn’t be hard to repair.

  She’d been lucky.

  “You were very brave,” the lictor said, pulling two chairs away from desks and swinging them around. “This will not take long. Please sit down. Would you like some water?”

  “That’s all right. I’m fine.” She sank into a chair and rubbed her neck. Her muscles twanged like plucked strings. “What’s your name?”

  “I am Lieutenant Janos Amcathra.” The soldier dropped into the other chair and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Your papers?”

  A Demican name. No surprise. He couldn’t be more than a second-generation citizen. Taya switched to Demican as she passed over her identification papers.

  “Well met in peacetime, Lieutenant Janos Amcathra.”

  “Well met in peacetime, Taya Icarus,” he replied in the same language, glancing over her papers before handing them back. He switched back to Ondinan as he picked up a pen. “Please describe everything that happened.”

  Taya recounted the event. It took her longer to tell it than it had to live it. Amcathra took detailed notes.

  “Then it was a coincidence that you were close to the accident scene,” he summarized. “If you had not stopped to rest—”

  “We were lucky.”

  “Yes.” Amcathra handed her a printed form and a pencil. “The last thing I must have is your signature and eyrie number. I will send you a message if I need to talk to you again.”

  Taya blinked, surprised.

  “That’s it? I thought we came in here because it was going to take a long time.”

  “We came in here so that you would not be mobbed by the crowd.”

  “Oh. Well, thank you.”

  “I do not often beat and brainwash Ondinium’s citizens,” he said, dryly.

  Taya grinned. “Don’t mind Pyke. He’s harmless.” She picked up the form and skimmed through it.

  Amcathra watched as she signed, then added his own signature.

  “Your associate may be correct about one matter. The collapse may not have been an accident.”

  “What do you mean?” Taya remembered Pyke telling her about stacked contract bids and substandard building materials in one of his anti-government rants.

  “Incidents of political violence have been on the rise, and this event fits the pattern.”

  “Is Octavus … political?” She knew that Octavus was a technological conservative, which made him popular among the plebeians but alienated many of the cardinal castes that depended on technology for their living.

  Amcathra shrugged.

  “I am only speculating. An icarus flies high and sees much. If you spot anything suspicious, I expect you will report it to me.”

  Typical. It was just like a lictor to drop enough hints of criminal activity to make a person uneasy, and then use that uneasiness to his own ends. Suspicion was a way of life for the military. And icarii were always asked to aid their investigations.

  Best just to agree and get out.

  “Of course. Is that all?”

  Amcathra glanced at her floating armature. “Do you req
uire any assistance with your equipment?”

  “No.” She rose to her feet, suppressing a flinch. Her back and arms ached.

  “Fly safely, Icarus,” he said, nodding and leaving.

  “Thanks.”

  Taya set about strapping herself back in, moving more slowly than usual. The metal exoskeleton and leather straps had left bruises all over her body. A hot bath would be nice. With luck, she’d have time to take one before the wedding.

  Once the armature was strapped on, its buoyant ondium helped support her sore muscles. Taya’s legs had stiffened up after sitting, and now they twinged as she walked.

  Back on the street, lictors kept the crowd of rubberneckers out of the way as engineers scrambled over the wireferry towers, running cables back and forth like a giant safety net to keep the wreckage from hitting the street.

  Taya stood on the wide station steps wondering how long it would take to lower the broken girder safely to the ground. She was glad she didn’t have to rely on the wireferry to move from sector to sector. The cars would have to be rerouted around the accident site, and a lot of important people were going to find themselves delayed on their way home.

  A few members of the crowd began to cheer. She looked around and realized they were waving at her. She lifted a hand, embarrassed. Scattered applause greeted the gesture.

  Uncomfortable at being the focus of attention, Taya limped across the street to the base of the wireferry tower. She considered waiting for Pyke, but she had no idea how long it would take him to give his statement. With his attitude toward authority, they might decide to hold him for the night.

  The lictors allowed her to climb up to the lowest launch dock, only fifty feet off the ground. It was high enough. She rolled her shoulders one last time and pulled on her cap, goggles, and gloves. Muscles protesting, she slid her arms into the wings, unlocked them with a backward shrug, and ran to the edge of the dock.

  The citizens below clapped as if they’d never seen an icarus take off before. Taya made a face and swept her wings out, searching for a thermal to lift her away from the broken girders and the unwanted attention.

  Chapter Two

  According to the clock she passed as she soared up the mountainside, she was officially off shift. She could land at the eyrie and ask someone else to carry her message from the College of Mathematics to the Oporphyr Council. No one would blame her, after the day’s excitement. And she really had to wash and change before Katerin’s wedding.

  But flying was working the aches out of her muscles, so she decided to push on and deliver the message. Until she heard back from the examination board, she didn’t want to do anything that might reduce her chances of being accepted into the diplomatic corps. Not all of the examination was pen-and-paper. The board would look at her personnel records, too, and some icarii whispered it even set up secret tests to observe how prospective envoys behaved when they didn’t know they were being watched.

  Rescuing a decatur’s family should look good on my record, she thought with a sudden burst of good humor, swooping past the landing docks and heading up the cliffs. Other icarii tilted their wings as they flew past, running their own messages across Primus and back and forth from Oporphyr Tower.

  Oporphyr Tower had once sheltered the imperate caste, centuries ago when Ondinium had still been an empire. Foreigners often wondered why the Council still met in such an inaccessible location, long after the last imperate had died, but the tower was more than just a government building. It was also the doorway into the hollow shell of Ondinium Mountain where the nation’s clockwork heart floated — the colossal Great Engine, each giant gear, pin, and lever cast out of pure ondium and suspended in the center of the mountain, ticking away in constant motion as it calculated Ondinium’s future.

  Taya soared through the unruly gusts of the diispira and landed on one of the narrow balconies that provided safe docks for the icarii who were constantly coming and going at the Council’s orders. The balcony doors were closed against the late autumn chill. Taya let herself in and pulled off her goggles, cap, and gloves. The foyer was dim and not much warmer than outside. Ondinium’s engineers had tried running gas lines to the tower, but the pipes kept breaking during the winter storms. As a result, the Council still conducted its business by the archaic light of fireplaces and oil lamps.

  One of those lamps highlighted the lictor who sat at the check-in desk, feet up, nose buried in a cheaply printed magazine.

  “I have a message,” Taya announced.

  “Recipient?” The guard moved her boots and set aside the magazine. The Broken Lens — political commentary and satire. Pyke’s kind of publication.

  “Do they really let you read stuff like that in here?” Taya pulled the package from her back pouch.

  “Are you kidding? The decaturs buy it wet off the press. The Lens’ reporters know more about what’s going on in Council than they do.”

  “That’s not very reassuring.” Taya tilted the package toward the light, looking for the address. “Decatur Forlore. Delivered by Taya.”

  The lictor dipped her pen into an inkwell and wrote as Taya stole another glance at the magazine’s cover. Maybe she should pick up a copy and see if it said anything about Decatur Octavus. Of course, Pyke might already have it… but borrowing it would mean listening to his latest political rant. No thanks.

  Maybe Cassi read the Lens. Her best friend didn’t give a tin feather for politics, but she lived for gossip and scandal.

  “Okay, you’re all set.” The guard told her how to find Forlore’s office and waved her through.

  Taya strode through the high halls, taking the opportunity to stretch the kinks out of her arms, legs, and back. Most of the strangers who passed traded respectful nods with her — dedicate clerks, librarians, programmers, and the occasional lictor. Once a masked and robed decatur paced past, and Taya joined everyone else in the hall in stepping aside, bowing with her palm pressed against her forehead. The lower-castes who worked in the tower had developed a fast and perfunctory bow around their decatur employers — a necessary compromise between inter-caste formality and day-to-day work life — but Taya followed protocol. If she became a diplomatic envoy, decorum would become her life.

  Decatur Forlore’s office was in one of the highest towers, and by the time Taya had finished walking up several flights of curving stairs, she was grateful for her wings. Their lighter-than-air metal made the climb a lot easier. Even so, she was breathing heavily in the thin air by the time she reached the doorway.

  She knocked.

  “Decatur Forlore? Icarus. I have a package for you.”

  “Enter.”

  She swung the door open and angled herself, and her wings, through.

  The decatur’s office was crammed with shelves of books, stacks of paper, and odd knickknacks strewn here and there on top of chairs and small tables. Two men stood at a table in the center of the room, examining a clock.

  Neither was covered, although Taya spotted a set of public robes thrown over a chair in one corner, an ivory mask laid on top. Even though they had their backs toward her, it was easy to pick out which one was the decatur. Forlore’s clothes were made of beautifully dyed silks, and his long black hair was bound back in an ornate style held together with glittering gold clasps, just like Viera Octavus’s. Taya saw the flash of rings on his fingers as he set the clock down.

  Then he glanced over his shoulder and smiled. He was a handsome man, with a generous mouth and amiable green eyes.

  “Wait for me, Icarus. I’ll be right with you.”

  He turned back to his guest, who wore the short hair and somber black suit of a famulate craftsman.

  “Thank you, Cris. I’m impressed. But in truth, I’m always impressed by your work.”

  “I’d be impressed if I knew how your guests managed to knock it off the mantel,
” said the repairman, one hand resting possessively on the clock case before rising to adjust his wire-rimmed spectacles. “This clock isn’t light. What in the Lady’s name were they doing?”

  “It was an accident.” The exalted lifted a dismissive shoulder. “High spirits and too many of them, I’m afraid. I appreciate your bringing this all the way up. You could have taken it around to the mansion.”

  “I prefer not to visit the mansion. And I wish you’d send a servant to pick up your packages, instead of expecting me to deliver them. I have other work to do, you know.”

  Taya shifted uncomfortably at the repairman’s sharp tone and overly familiar matter. He and the decatur must know each other well. Maybe Exalted Forlore broke his clocks on a regular basis. From the looks of his office, he wasn’t very careful with his possessions.

  “Yes, well, this way I get to see you once in a while.” The decatur held out a hand. The repairman shook his head with disapproval as they clasped.

  “You could always come down to visit me, for a change.” The man turned and Taya drew in a startled breath.

  The repairman was exalted, too.

  The contrast between the wave-shaped castemarks on his cheeks and his somber black famulate’s suit was so shocking that it took her a moment to collect her thoughts. She’d heard of exalteds who’d rejected their caste, but she’d never seen one before. She’d always considered them as mythical as dragons and unicorns.

  Instead of an exalted’s traditional long, ornamented hairstyle, the repairman had cut his black hair carelessly short, as if he didn’t care what impression he made. His face was narrow and sharp, with cold grey eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses and a thin mouth set in a skeptical twist.

  Taya dragged her gaze away, though he seemed to be looking just as intently at her. His chilly examination made her wonder if she’d somehow offended him. Should she have bowed? Then he took another step forward and she realized it was her armature that had attracted his attention.