Unwrapped Sky

by Rjurik Davidson

  Kata left him there, changed her clothes, and walked out into the night. Henri was gone: off to peddle his fudge elsewhere; the Festival of the Bull would be good for business. He’d be back: the streets around her apartment were his turf. He slept somewhere in the neighborhood, perhaps in a dry drain or a nook beneath one of the apartments.

  She cut through the factory district. It was full of dirt and grime, the smoke from the underground machines pumping out even at night. She had never forgotten her mother’s last words as she lay in the factory infirmary, her face a splotchy red-white, the contagion eating away at her insides: “Do whatever you must to survive, Kata. The gods know there’s nothing else to do.” And then blood had come to mother’s lips and dribbled down her chin, her chest had thrust forward unnaturally, an awful odor was loosed in the room, and she had died. The next day Kata was on the street. She cried that first day—never again.

  After her mother died, Kata had grown up in these streets, running with the urchin gangs, selling trinkets, stealing, doing odds and ends for House Technis, running messages, setting up robberies and murders. She had been a pinch-faced girl, scrawny but sly. Like the other children, she had dreamed of joining the ranks of dispossessed philosopher-assassins who lived moment to moment in Caeli-Amur, debating in the cafés in the afternoon, lounging in the liquor halls in the evening, forever at the beck and call of the Houses. She had one more minotaur to kill and she would be free.

  Now Kata climbed up through the city toward the mountaintop and along the edges of the factory district. She kept away from the larger streets where the city was alive with news of the minotaurs’ arrival, and after half an hour arrived at House Technis. She slid through a side gate in the outer wall that surrounded the complex of palaces and administration buildings, gardens and ponds.

  She came to the enormous palace, like the monstrous invention of a child’s fantasy, the ancient building swamped by layer after layer of extension, new wings and towers that had been added, regardless of architectural taste or style. It appeared as if blocks had simply been piled crazily one upon the other without design. Even now, as Kata glanced up at the towering structure, builders were working on the west wing.

  Kata passed along the labyrinthine corridors that, having also been built at different times, were forced to accommodate themselves to the planless structure to which they had been added. Pneumatiques whizzed and whirred overhead on hundreds of tiny wires. Along the walls, pipes rattled and shuddered and heaved: some carrying small barrels filled with instructions, others of unknown purpose. In the background, the constant thump of steam engines could be heard, as the building shifted the rooms deep inside its mobile southeastern wing around each other, according to some preplanned sequence. She had never been inside that particular technological marvel, but had heard that it was easy to lose yourself as each room rose, fell, or spun before locking temporarily into its new location.

  She slipped past a constant stream of house agents rushing to and fro, some carrying boxes, others pushing carts filled with delicate new technologies from the New-Men in Anlusia, yet others dragging bound and hooded seditionist prisoners to the dungeon. The place was a cacophony of voices yelling to each other all manner of things: what directions to Subofficiate Aruki’s office, about the latest strike to break out in what was becoming a wave of industrial unrest, about favors offered or claimed in return. Guards leaned against the walls beside their bolt-throwers, short-swords dangling from belts. Others played dice in a little alcove.

  Kata passed through small grottoes, a large room filled with secretaries lined in rows, each busily shuffling papers, another where cramped offices, enclosed by five-foot walls, stood like little buildings in the vastness of the room. Pneumatics zipped in and out of the little offices as if running on a vast network of spiderwebs.

  She found Officiate Rudé, a wiry little half-Anlusian administrator, in his office. Like most Anlusians, he had a youthful visage for someone so late in life: it was his quick and energetic movements, his slim and boyish body. He told her to wait as he signed a number of papers.

  “Strikes, strikes, strikes.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “Why should the workers be so belligerent now, when things are changing so fast?”

  “Perhaps it’s because things are uncertain that they think they can seize their opportunity.” Kata was aware that as winter had broken and spring set in, a wave of strikes has broken out in the city. The first few—the weavers who worked for House Arbor and the fishermen employed by House Marin—had been threatened into returning to work. Later, subofficiates were replaced, seditionists thrown into the dungeons, adjustments made to the factories’ operations. But that had not stopped more spot-strikes from breaking out like little fires on a smoldering summer’s day.

  “Well, the House has had enough. The time for kindnesses is over.” Rudé looked up from his forms. “Let’s get to work then, shall we?”

  Things were set in motion. Rudé accompanied her with two workmen back to the apartment in the carriage that would secretly carry away the minotaur. She took them to the balcony but avoided the sight of the minotaur’s body.

  Rudé took a sharp intake of breath and ran his hands through his fire-red hair speckled slightly with white. “Majestical,” he said. “Fascinating. I should have liked to talk to him.… I didn’t think you would do it.”

  “I told you I would,” said Kata.

  “I knew you were hard, but even so.”

  She stole a glance at the creature. It lay at odd angles against the balcony wall.

  “Get to work,” Rudé ordered.

  The workmen opened their cases and took from them mechanical saws and jagged knives with wicked blades.

  “And be careful of the horns. They’re the most valuable pieces. And the hide,” said Rudé.

  “You people…,” Kata said.

  “Remember, you asked for this job,” Rudé looked away from the minotaur across the city.

  Kata could not bear the high whine of the saw or the wet thump of the minotaur’s flesh, so she walked down the stairs.

  As Rudé followed her, he called back: “Don’t damage the eyes. Our thaumaturgists need those eyes for their preparations. Don’t get anything in the eyes.” He followed Kata into the room and said, “One more, Kata, and your debt will be repaid. Think about that. Think about how hard you’ve worked. Just one more minotaur.”

  “Even if I repay the debt, I’ll never be free of you. None of us ever will. It doesn’t matter which House, you’re all the same.”

  Rudé threw his head back and laughed. “Kata, remember, without us you’d still be on the street. Remember whom this building belongs to.” Technis had bought many of the buildings in the area, as if they weren’t content with their other forms of control but craved power over the citizens’ everyday lives.

  From above, she could still hear the sickening sound of meat and bone being cut to pieces. When they left, she suddenly felt an aching in her legs and back. She looked down at her blood-covered shins, pieces of skin scraped into ridges near her ankles. The adrenaline had long ago left her and now all she could feel was pain.

  TWO

  Two nights after the death of Cyriacus, Kata watched the Sun Parade, celebrating the moment four hundred years earlier when the sun had broken through the fog and Saliras’s forces had been routed by the minotaurs and the Caeli-Amurians together. Caeli-Amur was a city of festivals. Festival of the Sun, Aya’s Day, the Stars Descent, Celebration of the Dancing Goat, Alerion’s Day, the Twilight Observance—rare was the month when there was no celebration to be had.

  The parade descended from Via Gracchia on the top of the cliffs toward the Market Square by the piers. Figures walked with hideous masks: distorted faces that looked as if they had melted in great heat; goats with gigantic eyes and too-thin faces; and, of course, bulls. Others played thin, high-pitched flutes or circular drums that fit beneath their arms and could be squeezed to change the pitch. All were dressed outra
geously in oranges, reds, yellows. Crowds watched from the side of the road, clapping at the leering masks. Scattered among them were the minotaurs.

  Kata glanced at the crowd. On the other side of the road stood the smaller and darker minotaur she had met at the bar. She emptied the acrid medicine from her flask, gagging as she swallowed it. It was the last of the preparation. When she had finished the job, she would be able to afford more. She had spent most of her remaining money at the markets, buying deadly herbs. From these she had prepared poison, mixing it with the flagon of wine, which she then placed in her cupboard. She could not risk another fight: Who would have believed anyone could be as strong as Cyriacus, to take so much physical punishment?

  She had poison enough for ten men. That should be enough.

  She scuttled gingerly through a break in the parade, dodging the drummers and dancers. Her shins were still scabby and bruised.

  “Hello,” she said to the minotaur.

  “Ah,” he said, “the woman who can hold her own. And did you?”

  She smiled. His eyes did not seem so terrible this time; they seemed to be laughing. “I always hold my own.”

  “I see. I’m Aemilius.”

  “Kata,” she said. “You’re not marching in the parade.”

  He shrugged and looked to the sky. “Look at the moon. Can you see Aya’s handprints, side by side, from when he threw it into the sky?”

  “It’s bright, isn’t it?”

  “So bright that on a clear and calm night like this, you can see the Sunken City through the crystal water.”

  “No.” Kata frowned in disbelief. She knew that Caeli-Enas, Caeli-Amur’s sister city, was deep beneath the ocean. But she had always assumed that it was lost in the murky depths.

  “I swear. Would you like to see?”

  She hesitated. She should take this chance. It was falling into her lap. “Yes.”

  They marched together up to the great steam tower—full of thumping and clattering from the engine at its base—that powered the cable car from the top of the cliff to the piers. There were too many people on the streets, and the walk would have been a long one.

  They entered a doorway in the tower’s base and climbed wide stone stairs up to a wide entrance chamber with a platform opening out to the air on one side. A bustle of white-haired people with pointy beards or shawls or aging, curved backs stood around, whispering to each other excitedly. To view the city and the Sun Parade from the cable car was popular among the older citizens. The youth lined the streets or marched in the parade itself.

  Kata and Aemilius watched as a cable car swung around the rear of the tower and reemerged at the open side of the chamber. They stepped into the car, which filled with people around them. There was no conductor—the cable car had always been free in Caeli-Amur, a remnant from ancient days perhaps. The workers who kept it going were supported by donations from the citizens. Some civic spirit still lived on in the city.

  As they swung over the city, looking at the parade winding below like a cascade of lights, Kata noticed the passengers in the carriage kept away from Aemilius. She recognized their wide-eyed apprehension.

  “You realize the effect you have on those around you,” she whispered to him.

  “Of course.” Aemilius did not look about: to do so would be undignified.

  “You have a strange bearing; you hold yourself apart somehow.”

  “And you,” he said. “You do also.”

  She looked away from him, down at the street-trams caught in the traffic below. The streets were like rivers of yellow and flickering lights. She could think of nothing more to say.

  They reached the docks, nine piers jutting into a glassy, silent ocean. Clippers and cutters floated between monolithic steamers, the new and the old side by side. The piers were quiet: there were no signs of the Xsanthian dockworkers and only a few boatmen moved around carrying rope or boxes of tools. The moon hovered above, lighting a section of the water in one silvery molten band. Aemilius paid a boatman and took a small rowboat.

  “It’s too far,” she said. “We need a steamer.”

  “It’s not too far. Get in.”

  She hesitated, then stepped onto the dark wooden planks of the boat.

  Aemilius rowed away from the city, over the glassy ocean, the oars making satisfying creaks against the wooden oarlocks and subtle splashes as they entered the water. The two of them were silent as they left the city far behind, though they could still hear the laughter and the pipes and drums of the festival floating over the water.

  “Look,” said Aemilius after some time.

  Kata peered over the edge of the boat and put her hand to her chest in astonishment. “You can see it, you can really see it.”

  Beneath them Caeli-Enas shimmered silvery white. Buildings and boulevards came suddenly into focus and then blurred again as the water moved quietly beneath them. Perched on its sunken hill, the great white dome and marble pillars of a statuesque building emerged briefly into view. Over four hundred years that city had slept beneath the ocean and with it, the last secrets of the ancients. A sense of wonder awakened in Kata. For the first time in years, she felt that the world was a large place filled with possibility.

  “Most of the city was white marble,” said Aemilius. “I walked those streets when I was young. I watched white-caparisoned horses pull crow-black carriages. I watched street-officers lighting gas lamps on hot summer nights as lovers drifted through the wide streets.”

  “How old are you?” asked Kata.

  “Five hundred and twelve.”

  Kata drew a long, quiet breath. So old. Eventually she said, “There is a sadness about you.”

  “Look,” he said. “Can you see something moving down there? They say there are still sea serpents with heads like houses, bodies big as Numerian caravans.”

  “There are,” she said. “I’ve seen them. They come closer to land during the winter.” She caught a glimpse of something snaking through the Sunken City’s streets. It seemed to warp in and out of existence. A chill ran down her spine. Should the creature surface, their rowboat would capsize and the serpent would swallow them whole.

  “Perhaps we should head back,” she said.

  Again, Kata led a minotaur up the cobblestoned alleyway to her house. Again the creature came in without encouragement, looking around her parlor with interest. He stopped at the bookshelf that held the few philosophical classics she could afford: Marka’s Unintentional Action and Ugesio’s Morality and Madness, the two most popular texts.

  “You taught yourself philosophy?” he said.

  “A little.”

  “This book Unintentional Action, what does it argue?” Aemilius said.

  “Ah, one of the new philosophers. Marka argues we only have the illusion of choice, the illusion of free will. He says that we are controlled by our past, by our surroundings, that we are forced into certain actions.” The streets where Kata lived as a child, the death of her mother, flashed into her mind, as did her desperate and ongoing desire to escape them, to escape the memory of them.

  “And what do you think?” Aemilius asked.

  “I think he’s right. We are all forced to do things we’d rather not, to compromise.”

  “But is it not possible that our very knowledge of those forces allows us some measure of freedom?”

  Kata pressed her lips “I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t even know where I am.”

  “The ancients said that everything has its place,” said Aemilius. “Everything finds its place.”

  “Those days have passed.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Would you like a drink?” She felt a knot in her stomach and tried to swallow, her throat dry with fear. Nausea built up in her body. Her little finger twitched then was still. Oh no, she thought, not now. She fought the rising sickness back.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She walked to her small kitchen, took the flagon of wine, two cups, and placed them on the bench. Sh
e stared at them.

  “You have no windows in this room?”

  “It’s hemmed in on all sides. Above, there is a balcony.”

  “It is a sparse house. Not much comfort here.”

  “As much comfort as I need. I fought for this place. I struggled for it. Even now it is not yet mine.” She stared at the flagon. She should pour the cups, but she could not. Nausea rose again in her body. Oh no, she thought. Quickly. She unstopped the flagon but set it down again on the bench before she dropped it. Her legs gave way beneath her and her body shook violently, as if her legs and arms were driven by an engine. She gurgled as the fit came on. Aemilius was above her, grasping her shoulder.

  “Kata, can you hear me?” He grasped her hand. “Squeeze my hand. Try to squeeze my hand.”

  Though her body shook and spasmed, she was aware of his presence above her. He held her hand and her shoulder and he comforted her. Though his voice faded away, as if down a long corridor, she was not entirely alone.

  When the fit was over, she felt as if she had been wrung like a wet piece of clothing, twisted and distorted and empty. Aemilius carried her upstairs to her bed and laid her down.

  “You will be all right now,” he said. “But you must sleep.”

  Kata closed her eyes and opened them again. Aemilius was sniffing the air and looking around curiously.

  Exhausted, Kata she drifted off to the sight of him sitting above her, his deep eyes impassive, occasionally closing as he looked down on her. When she woke he was gone.

  The following afternoon, Rudé let himself in to Kata’s apartment as she lay on her cushions in the corner of the parlor, still exhausted from the fit. It took her a day to recover, at least, and now that she had run out of the preparation that eased her condition, her body would remain tired and drawn.

  “This is my house,” she said to Rudé, lifting her head with effort. “You can’t just come in here.”

  “But I can,” he said, holding up his key, straightening his sharp-lined clothes. “And I will.”