Lady of Drith

by Chad Huskins

  “Good luck, Thryis girl,” Edwon said.

  “Thanks,” she said, passing beneath the first horizontal bars.

  Maneuvering between the hot, hissing pipes without touching them was a feat in itself. Most people didn’t last a year on the tender before gaining a permanent burn scar. That’s why working the tender was viewed as the lowest rung of work.

  Her first day on the tender team had been punishment from Sylaz for a bit of sass she had given him while working on the steam dome team. The steam dome’s whole purpose was to collect the steam at the top of the boiler so that it could be fed into the main engines, and Thryis had argued that too much steam was being let from the tender’s valves at once. “The pressure is going to cause another explosion,” she had told him. “Just like the one that killed those dozen men last month.”

  “Well, if you’re so smart, why don’t you work the tender team tomorrow?” Sylaz had said with sinister glee. And she had. And just to show him, she’d worked herself hard, synchronizing the valves so that the steam dome pressurized at a safer rate.

  As it turned out, Thryis had cursed herself. Her flexible clockwork leg and her natural nimbleness dovetailed nicely with her ability to learn new things fast. Now that she had shown her abilities, Sylaz stuck her on the tender team almost every day.

  Working on the tender also required a quick, inventive mind, one accustomed to improvisation. That’s why, when Thryis came upon pipe number forty-seven and saw that it had ruptured at the middle, and that a shower of scalding hot steam was pouring out, she did not panic.

  One found a rhythm in the clanks, hisses, and thrums of the Great Generator. Everyone had their part to play, their own dangers when facing their particular part of the hot, angry beast.

  This was her part.

  Thryis steered clear of the arc of the leak, weaving through the other pipes while reaching inside her bag for the wrench. She had to be careful at times to pull in her chest so that she wasn’t burned. Thryis’s breasts had grown larger than she would have liked in the last year, at least for this kind of work. Indeed, this kind of work had her of the mind that breasts were rather like dogs, for all little girls wanted them until they knew how much trouble and responsibility they were.

  She stepped into a puddle, which had formed from a slow drip coming from pipe number twenty-two above her head. That’s why it was always a good idea to keep on thick foot coverings, no matter how hot it got around the tender.

  Beside Thryis, pipe number fifty-three was rattling like it was in an earthquake, so she kept her eye on it. The main barrel itself, far above her, moaned like a beast with a bottomless stomach, constantly needing to be fed.

  Using the wrench, she turned the knob on forty-seven, temporarily cutting off its steam flow. This made the other pipes start to stutter now, since the pressure was building up in the main barrel, and all that steam had to find someplace else to go.

  The heat amidst the twisting spiral of pipes was sweltering, filling up every pit of her body with pools of sweat. This was why the people who worked the tender got only smaller with time—they lost weight fast, sometimes becoming thin as skeletons.

  Thryis produced a half-circle clamp from her bag, one that was fitted perfectly for tender pipes. She wiped the sweat from her brow, then used her hammer to smack the clampe into place. She then put a larger piece around it, one with a knob on top. Using the wrench, she twisted the knob, tightening it down.

  She put the wrench away for a moment. To save time, she let it dangle from one of the shafts on her false leg—if she needed it again, it was easier to snag it from there.

  Next, she tore off a piece of her own stola and wrapped the cloth around the joint she had just created. This would soak up what little bit dribbled out.

  Thryis turned the knob slowly, and pipe forty-seven rattled, but otherwise did not spring its leak. Satisfied, she turned and headed back out. Her elbow barely touched one of the pipes, and she hissed and bit her tongue to deal with the scalding pain.

  By the time she emerged from the pipes, Thryis was breathing heavily. Her vision suddenly went a little blurry. Edwon was there, he saw her going down and rushed to catch her, which he did awkwardly, and then dragged her over to the barrel of cold water to douse her.

  Thryis took a few minutes to cool down, and once she did, she took several gulps of water.

  “You’re a goddess, Thryis girl,” Edwon said.

  “A goddess would only have to wave her hand to fix a leak,” she panted. “What I did was much more impressive.”

  She took another few gulps of water, then ascended a set of stairs to assist with the shoveling of coal into the tender’s second sub-chamber.

  This would take up most of her day.

  The coal was brought in by railcars being shoved down a long, mechanical line, which came from the Vagarr Mines and snaked through the Street of Stone. At the end of that line, the railcars came to the Great Generator, tipped, and dropped more coal, which Drea and a team of twelve shoveled into the roaring fires of the burners. As with the tenders, each worker had to be capable of taking intense heat for prolonged periods.

  At noon, Edwon appeared with a tray of food and a pitcher of water, which he shared with Thryis and the other shovelers, all of whom were either slaves, or indentured servants like Drea.

  After a short break, it was back to work.

  The day was long, the work monotonous. Thryis was called down below to help patch a hole in pipe number eighty-three, then it was back up to shoveling.

  All this work—all this monotonous, back-breaking, dangerous work—it was feeding the Drithean war machine. The very swordsmiths she’d passed on her way to work owed the heat of their forges to the Great Generator, as did the armorsmiths and mechanics, whose livelihoods depended on this immense machine.

  Industry feeds war, and war feeds industry. A common phrase among Collegiates. The taskmasters said this ought to make the workers proud, knowing that their work helped Drith’s sons fight their wars far from here, but Thryis felt no pride in the work.

  The men busied themselves with a long, solemn work song, one that Thryis had never heard before,

  Blaaaaaaackveil! Blaaaaaaackveil!

  Her eyes so cold,

  Her guns so bold,

  Her skin as rough as shale

  Direshire has got its killers,

  Oldhome has got it mages,

  But Windscape has the Lady Blackveil,

  Draped in talismans and sages

  Peculiar song, Thryis thought, but she soon dismissed it as more noise.

  Then, at last, there came a loud whistle that marked the end of the shift. Thryis gathered all her tools and went to stand in the long line at the east end of the warehouse, where Sylaz and three pursers stood, accounting for each worker leaving and handing out the day’s wages.

  Once paid her ten coppers, she started towards home, along with hundreds of others. As they left, the next shift came in. The Great Generator was never left unattended, the machine was far too important to the city’s growth, and thus the Empire’s expansion.

  There were a few mariya shops open now, shops selling small treats for workers on their way to or from the warehouse. Thryis used a little of what she’d earned that day to buy some licorice, to share with Thrayton later.

  As she made her way back down the Street of Steel, Thryis’s mind drifted back to Drea. She was eager to see her friend, and she prayed, as she did every day, that nothing evil had happened to her.

  Drea had been tossed from one life to the next, and so far she had taken it with supreme equanimity. But Thryis knew Drea well. The girl’s anger was well hidden, and kept beneath the surface. It was like the tender, building up pressure, and should it explode it would destroy itself and others.

  That anger of hers, what happens if it comes out like it did that day in the alley, with the boy and the knife? What happens if her Kalderus rage awakens again? What happens if—

  Suddenly, a loud b
oom! brought Thryis out of her reverie. It was close by, and everyone on the street was jolted. It was followed by another shot. For a moment Thryis thought a tender had exploded on the Great Generator behind her, but then she realized what it really was.

  Someone was firing a pistol! People ran for cover, dipping into alleys or leaping behind stalls.

  Thryis turned to look around, and just as she did, she saw two bodies falling to the ground, dead. They were not five steps away from her.

  Thryis gaped at the bodies in shock, watching the pools of blood spreading out from them and splitting into different rivers on the cobbled street. Surprise lived in their dead eyes, and Thryis realized she knew both men. One was the scarred man that had badgered her earlier that morning, and the other was his one-armed friend.

  Looking at their positions, it appeared as though both men had just stepped out from a nearby alley, and had been on a path straight to her. In fact, one of them had an empty burlap sack in his hands. Had he been intending on abducting someone?

  It took Thryis a moment to realize she might’ve been their intended victim.

  But who shot them? she thought, her mind racing. And why?

  Turning around, she looked for any sign of an armed citizen. She saw no such person, only people still running from the streets, desperate to avoid any more crossfire.

  If I had any sense, I’d be doing the same, she thought.

  But Thryis had been far too stunned by the sight of the men to react rationally. And as she stood there, frozen, she caught sight of a woman…a woman dressed all in black. The dark stola she wore merged seamlessly with the dark palla on her head. Except for her green eyes, her face was covered with a veil. In her right hand she held a shortpistol, its barrel emitting a thin tendril of smoke. She stood ten feet away from the dead men, and as she approached them, she gave her pistol a single twirl as she replaced it in the holster at her side.

  A woman with a gun! Thryis had never seen such a thing.

  She watched in a state of shock as the woman nudged both corpses with her toe, making sure they were dead. Then, she looked up at Thryis, who was the only fool left standing in the street. And Thryis remained frozen as the woman approached her. Once she got close, Thryis could smell the gunsmoke roiling off the gun.

  The woman stopped in front of her.

  Thryis’s heart was in her throat.

  At last, the woman held out her other hand, and offered Thryis a ceramic cylinder, the kind usually used to contain scrolls. When Thryis didn’t immediately take it, the black-garbed woman tossed it onto the ground at her feet. “Drea Kalder,” she said.

  Thryis shook her head. “N-no…I’m—”

  “Thryis Ardenk, I know. Give that to Drea. It will not open for any but her. Tell her Lady Blackveil would speak with her in the Forum, a week from today, at the Hour of the Crow. Tell her I’ll be waiting at the statue of the Red Wyrm.” She added, “And tell her to keep the Old Man close.”

  With that, the woman turned and walked away, her stola flapping in a light breeze.

  “Wait!” Thryis called. “Who are you?”

  The woman disappeared around the corner of a mariya shop, leaving Thryis alone on the street.

  Now that she was gathering her wits up off the floor, Thryis bent to recover the ceramic container. Then she turned and darted away, taking a series of narrow, suffocating alleys back home.

  The whole way, she kept thinking, Blackveil, Blackveil. Why does the name sound so familiar? It took a while, but she finally recalled the song she had heard the workers singing earlier today.

  When Thryis finally made it home, she shut the door and locked it, panting. She took a seat in the small living room near the fireplace, where her father was standing up to greet her. “Thryis girl?” said Lord Thronis Ardenk. “Is that you?”

  She ran to her father and hugged him.

  “Thryis? What’s happened, girl? Tell me.”

  Thryis shook her head. “I don’t even know how to say it. I’ve just seen…something awful.”

  “Tell me.”

  After Thryis finished relaying the story, her father’s face went ashen. “And this woman,” he said, taking the ceramic container from her. “Did she give her name?”

  “Yes. Lady Blackveil, she said.”

  “And was she garbed in a black stola?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  Her father tried to open the container, but it would not open for him, just as the woman said. He swallowed hard, then collapsed into a chair near the fireplace, gazing pensively into its flames. “I’ve heard of this woman,” he whispered.

  “Who is she, Father?”

  Thronis looked at his daughter wearily. “Someone I’d thought long dead. I’d heard she was dead, at any rate.” With a quivering hand, he massaged his brow. “But then there were rumors, campfire stories, and songs I’ve heard sung lately. Songs brought into Drith by traveling bards—”

  Thryis touched his hand. “Father, who is she?”

  He looked at her. The fire cast his face in flickering shadows. “A killer,” he whispered gravely. “Thryis girl, you mustn’t ever give this message to Drea. You must forget this ever happened.”

  She leaned in close to him. “Father, tell me. What’s going on? What is this all about?”

  And then he told her what he knew of Lady Blackveil. Thryis listened with mounting fear and astonishment. Then, despite her father’s pleading for her to keep this secret from Drea, the next morning Thryis gathered up her things for a hike. She gave her leg a winding, then stormed out of the house and made for Upper City.

  It was freezing out, the wind was fierce, and there were shards of sleet slashing out from the sky as she made her way. But Thryis’s blood was up, and her fear for Drea’s life kept her warm. Once she reached the home of the Syphenus, she did not hesitate to knock on the door.

  When a slave answered, she said, “Bring Drea Kalder to me. At once.”

  : The Old Man:

  When they were but eleven years old, Drea Kalder and Thryis Ardenk ran away from home. They didn’t get far before getting lost. It had been an overcast night, when all three moons were hiding from the world. It became cold—much like the weather today—and when night fell, that’s when they first held hands.

  They had both been scared. Drea was afraid because she had overheard her father speaking to her mother in their study, and they had been discussing marrying Drea off to some senator for political gain. Drea had told Thryis, and Thryis was having none of it. She swore she would hide Drea somewhere. They would hide inside the Grand Chronometer, which had only just been built.

  Unable to find the North Square where the gigantic clock stood, they huddled together in a horse stable and held hands.

  It had been a long night. Drea had leaned on Thryis’s shoulder and cried. She lamented having to marry someone she didn’t love. Thryis had caressed her cheek and said, “I will do whatever you ask, and I will not let harm come to you.”

  The night had gotten colder.

  Eventually, they realized they had only one choice, to go home. Thryis had taken Drea by the hand and led her away from the stable. It took some doing, but they asked a few passersby on the street for directions, and eventually found their way back to Drea’s house.

  Just before helping Drea climb back inside her window, Thryis had taken Drea by her hands and kissed them, saying, “If you ever want to try this again, you have but to ask. I run wherever you run.”

  Now, in the cottage that had become Drea’s home, the two girls took each other’s hands and smiled briefly. They embraced, and then looked in each other’s eyes.

  Drea was so happy to see her, but it was a wonder that Thryis had made the journey on foot. How many times must she have stopped to wind up her clockwork leg? How many miles must she have walked? How many fresh calluses had her one good foot accrued?

  But Drea noticed that Thryis had a brow furrowed in concern, and she asked her what was the matter.
<
br />   “Drea luv, I’ve come with some rather startling news.”

  “Tell me,” she said, directing her friend into a chair by the crackling fire that Fengin had stoked for her.

  Thryis sat down at once, and was about to start speaking when her eyes caught something. It was on the easel, a paper board with fresh lines and shading. Thryis smiled at her own portrait and said, “It’s a passable likeness. But the chin is upturned, and the eyes narrow and haughty. It makes me look too proud.”

  “Is it a problem?”

  “No! No, no, no. Of course not, no. Never. A bit, yes. I do not like to think of myself as being too proud.”

  “Well, if you’re not proud, then I never met a woman who is,” Drea laughed.

  “Smack your bottom! I’m not half so proud as some.”

  “Shall I destroy the piece, then?” Drea said, reaching over to tear it from the easel. “I can toss it in the fireplace now, if it displeases you so—”

  “Oh, stop your games!”

  Drea smirked, and an arched an eyebrow. “Games? What games?”

  “You know what games,” Thryis said. “The ones where you pretend to be injured by some words I’ve said. You forget who I am, Drea Kalder, I see right through you.”

  “Thryis, believe me when I say I could never forget you.”

  They looked at one another a moment, smiling. Drea felt her heart beating a little faster. She suddenly recalled the rush of each touch, every moment she had wondered about those lips, the sound of Thryis’s laughter…

  “Well,” Thryis said. “I should hope you don’t forget me.”

  Drea nodded towards the portrait. “I thought it was evident by this particular piece?”

  Thryis gazed at the portrait, but she appeared preoccupied with something else. She turned her gaze to consider the melancholy state of the cottage, as well as the single window that looked out at the congestion of gloomy trees. “I hate to think of you trapped here. Among strangers.”