Unwrapped Sky

by Rjurik Davidson

  “I need money, for medicine.”

  “Do you now? The agreement was two minotaurs. Not one.”

  “I need an advance.”

  “I see. Well, don’t ever claim that House Technis is not generous, that it doesn’t look after its own.” He carefully placed a pile of ten florens on the table, stacked like a little tower. “By the end of the Festival, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a knock on the door. Rudé, his wiry little body always full of quick movements, darted against the wall for protection. Officiates lived in fear, even though the vicious war between House Arbor and House Technis had recently fallen into a lull. It was rare to find them out on the streets, meeting their agents and assassins face-to-face, which was mostly the province of the subofficiates. It was a measure of the mission’s importance that Rudé should oversee it himself. Unlike the Directors, who were surrounded by aides of all kinds, officiates needed to organize their own protection, if they felt it warranted.

  “Get the door,” Rudé said, pulling out a long-knife from underneath his jacket.

  Kata pushed herself to her feet and wearily opened the door. Aemilius stood towering behind it.

  Exhausted, she hesitated. She couldn’t think of a way to stop the minotaur from entering and meeting Rudé. In any case, she was pleased to see him. His presence calmed her, as if he were a cool rock against which she could lean, close her eyes, and rest her face. Guilt washed through her now. For he had been nothing but gentle and caring, and she had been—no, it was best not to think about her deception. These thoughts rushing though her head, contradictory feelings swirling within her, Kata finally said, “Come in.”

  “I came to see if you were feeling better.”

  “I am, thank you.”

  “Well, look,” said Rudé, smiling slightly, the knife hidden. “A minotaur. Fantastic … Let me see. But you’re a little small for a minotaur, aren’t you?”

  “Is greatness measured by size?” asked Aemilius.

  Rudé approached Aemilius, looking even smaller as he came close to the minotaur. “Incredible.”

  “A friend of yours?” Aemilius asked Kata.

  “Oh,” said Rudé, “I’ve known Kata since she was just a girl. I’ve seen her … grow up.”

  In those days, Rudé had kept in touch with the children on the streets of the factory district. “Hello, Kata,” he had always greeted her ebulliently. “No smile for me to today?” Sometimes he had taken out a little toy, a windup bird or a mechanical man, and given it to one of the children. The urchins had prized the toys above all others, for they were made with rare technical skill. Powered by springs and wires, the birds would fly and the men would march. Some were even powered by thaumaturgy. The children had never seen anything like them. Rudé had taken special interest in Kata. Her sheer strength of will seemed to impress him. She was the quickest messenger, the most determined servant. “My little Kata,” he had said. When she was fourteen, he said, “I know a philosopher-assassin who might be interested in taking on a pupil.” Kata had leaped for the chance: to be a philosopher-assassin, that was the dream of all the children. It was their only escape from the factory district. And so she met Sarrat the Numerian and escaped the grimy factories and the filthy alleyways that surrounded them.

  Now, as Rudé obliquely mentioned those days, Aemilius nodded, as if thinking.

  “I’d better go,” said Rudé, grinning quickly. “There are things to do! But I should very much like to see you again, minotaur. I should very much like to talk to you.”

  “Perhaps you shall,” said Aemilius as Rudé closed the door behind him. “Strange,” he said to Kata, “is he a New-Man, with all that quick energy?”

  “Yes, he is half-Anlusian,” said Kata, swaying slightly on her feet. “You can see it in his actions, his movements … his ambition.”

  “I have never been to Anlusia, but I should very much like to see it. They say the New-Men are voracious, insatiable, that they take everything they can and destroy it to rebuild it. They say their city is constantly growing, constantly changing—even more than Caeli-Amur!”

  “But is that any way to live? Isn’t that just distracting yourself from who you are, by concentrating solely on what you do, what you have?” She pursed her lips: she sounded just like Sarrat, who held to the Cajian philosophy of asceticism. It was a philosophy she’d rejected, and even now she thought of the time she’d spent on the streets, of her desire to own her house. She was no ascetic.

  “Of course. And for that reason I should like to see it. To watch the New-Men build their technical wonders, only to throw them away.”

  Kata shuffled to the kitchen. The flagon was where she left it. “Would you like some wine? We didn’t have a chance last night.”

  “No. I have someone to meet. Thank you, though.”

  Kata relseased the tension that had been building up in her body. She was not well enough today. She returned the flagon to the cupboard and walked him to the door.

  “Rest,” Aemilius said.

  “I will.”

  She closed the door behind him and collapsed onto the cushions in the corner. She would kill him, or perhaps another minotaur, tomorrow. But even as she thought it, her mind was filled with doubt.

  THREE

  In the mornings, the streets around Caeli-Amur’s Factory Quarter bustled with grime-streaked workers, their brown clothes camouflaged in the fog and smoke that later dissipated in the morning sun. The workers descended quickly down the cobblestoned streets and alleyways, disappearing in and out of the haze on their way to the early shifts. At times the lines of figures coalesced into groups, taking a brief moment for greetings, then separated once more. Other lines—the night shift—straggled in the opposite direction, their soot-stained faces grim in the morning light. Everywhere surrounding them were the street urchins, dashing about on unknown business, running in gangs, smiling their disarming smiles, their hands slipping into unsuspecting pockets and emerging with half-empty purses. The mornings in the Factory Quarter were the happiest, the most filled with promise, as if things might be getting better, achieving a fairer balance. At night things were different, when the smoke merged with a sea of roiling fog, when the pitter-patter of children’s feet was enough to terrify the passerby, and a disarming smile was likely to mean a rapid, knife-filled death.

  Subofficiate Boris Autec hustled along the streets, stopping every now and then to catch his breath. His round body was no longer used to all this walking: it seemed bloated like a bladder and his once youthful face had now settled into heavy middle age. But his heart was beating quickly for other reasons. He was about to visit the Tram Factory, with its welders and fitters, its hammering and sawing, its sparks that danced on the floor like miniature symbols of life. The Tram Factory: he knew it, had once loved and hated it. Now he was afraid.

  Boris reached into the bag that swung over his hip, drew out a flask, unscrewed the lid, and took a swig. The Anlusian hot-wine burned his mouth and throat while his eyes watered. After a few minutes, his body surged with energy. His armpits grew damp, his jaws clenched, he licked his lips—he felt alive. The hot-wine kept you awake like strong coffee and filled the body with unnatural strength, the mind with thoughts of invincibility. He reached again for the flask.

  When Boris reached the factory, he stood by the open double doors and watched. A row of freight-trams stood along one wall, their walled trays gray and grim: if you wanted to haul something heavy around Caeli-Amur, this was the way to do it. Along another wall stood passenger trams used for ferrying Caeli-Amur’s population. These were alive with solar hues: reds and yellows and oranges. The city was not just growing but changing; demand was high for transport that could move the population quickly and efficiently. In one corner a boiler, firebox, and valve gear sat like the insides of a creature. Around it were scattered pieces of trams: wheel sets, axleboxes, blastpipes.

  The tramworkers knew he was there, but went about their business with
out acknowledging him: the young ones still filled with fresh vitality; the old with that haunted look, the drained look.

  As Boris strode in boldly, his chest jutting forward like a peacock’s, a heavy man emerged from behind one of the passenger trams, its silver fittings sparkling. The man shrugged his hunched shoulders and closed his heavy-lidded eyes slowly. “So they sent you.”

  Boris clenched his teeth. “Mathias, your hair has gone gray.”

  “It happens to workers.”

  “It happens to us all,” said Boris.

  “Come on then.” Mathias turned and walked across to a tram at the far end of the factory. Its windows were blackened around the edges when they should have been silver framed; its insides ruined by fire. The red and gold paint on its walls was blistered and discolored.

  Boris nodded, aware of the other workers standing in groups, staring from behind. “Pick one or two—those most responsible—and I’ll be able to save the rest.”

  “How can we know what happened? Most likely we calculated the binding formulae incorrectly. The engine exploded as a result.”

  “Come on, Mathias, we both know that’s not true.”

  “Oh, but you know it could be. You know that we are not taught properly, not trained in the right calculations, that we are squeezed until we end up like Mad Mister Alter, or just give out like the Numerian Bachara. You remember him, don’t you?”

  Bachara had slowed down like a windup toy, growing ever bonier until one day he just stopped in the factory, his eyes and teeth strangely white in his black face. He hadn’t collapsed like the dead usually do. Rather, he seemed in some state of suspended animation, never to return to this life. Boris remembered the horror of the Numerian’s eyes. He imagined something flickering in there, as if Bachara was aware of the horror of his own predicament.

  “You know it’s nothing to do with your training.” Boris crossed his arms, sweat sticky on his skin. He licked his lips, which seemed thick and bloated. “You know I’m on your side, but the House won’t tolerate sabotage. Please, let me help.”

  Mathias’s heavy eyelids blinked slowly. “There was a time when once you would never have asked this of me.”

  Boris’s mouth seemed terribly dry. He swallowed uncomfortably. “Make sure you fix the tram. Make sure there are no more accidents.”

  One of the workers said something behind him and laughed.

  “It will happen again,” Mathias said. “It will keep happening.”

  “Remember when we were friends?” Boris’s voice was soft now, both sad and accusatory.

  “Before you chose … before you moved up.”

  With impossible strength fueled by the hot-wine, Boris clasped Mathias by his tunic and threw him against the tram’s wall. The tram shuddered and clouds of black smoke billowed from its ruined insides. Mathias gasped, his head rocking forward from the force, his jaw opening in shock. Boris held the heavy worker a foot from the ground. The hot-wine filled him and coursed through his body. He took one hand away and grabbed Mathias by the jaw. “What was I supposed to do? I had a sick wife and a child!”

  “We all have troubles: sick wives, sick families, sick grandparents.”

  “Not like Remmie, you didn’t! She was taken by those things and little Saidra looked on with these great sad eyes, wondering what was happening to her mother.” Even now the image of his wife’s death and his little daughter came to mind. Everything had been for the love of his family.

  Mathias looked away from him, guilty. “Be careful whose side you take Boris, the world is changing faster than you can imagine.”

  Boris walked slowly up through the city, out of the factory district, along the Via Persine that ran from the Market Square by the docks, to the north of the crumbling white cliffs, all the way to House Technis Complex. The whole place was the very image of industry. People were acting; events were occurring; Technis was on the march. And Boris was a part of it. As there was no direct route to the offices Boris sought—the Palace having been cobbled together without a plan—he climbed up and down stairs and finally to a door on which hung a little plaque: OFFICIATE RUDÉ.

  Inside, Rudé sat behind a desk, a collection of fountain pens angling toward him, two neatly piled papers beside them. His hand moved quickly between the papers, shifting pages from pile to pile, even as he wrote. On one side of the desk sat a strange contraption, all metal arms and wooden trays.

  Boris stepped forward and waited for Rudé to stop writing.

  “Watch this.” Rudé placed a sheet of paper in one of the machine’s trays. He pulled a lever near the base of the contraption. The tray tipped, the paper disappeared, there was a tearing sound and strips of shredded paper emerged from the back of the machine, curling into a little pile.

  The officiate grinned brilliantly, looking like a child with a toy.

  Boris stared in disbelief. “What—?”

  “I made it myself. Watch this.” Rudé put a pile of papers in another tray, pulled another lever at the base and the papers were shuffled into some kind of order, landing in a series of pockets that poked out of one side. There was a grinding sound. Bits of paper were crumpled within the mechanism and the whole thing shuddered to a halt.

  Rudé grinned again, ran his hand through his hair, and shrugged. “So—the Tram Factory.”

  “Sabotage.”

  Rudé joins his hands. “At this time! As if the Festival of the Bull and the House’s thaumaturgists pressing down on me like a clamp aren’t enough! What do you suggest?”

  Boris shifted in his seat uncomfortably, like a restless child, before settling himself again. “We should teach them the thuamaturgists’ protection charms. These are good men, but they’re frustrated. Too many are destroyed by the binding formulae we teach them. They cannot protect themselves. The Other Side leaches into them, warps them, or drives thems mad, little by little.”

  “Nobody can control thaumaturgy! Not even the greatest thaumaturgists in the world can stop the Other Side from leaking through. Not even the Sortileges of Varenis. Yes, we could train them in the protection charms, but what for? So they can live another few years? No, we won’t train these workers as true thaumaturgists. We don’t place such power in the hands of those who haven’t come through the proper processes. Buy them off. We don’t want this to go higher,” said the New-Man. “The Elo-Talern have of late started to take an interest in such events. For more than ten years they have left us be, but now they have reawoken.”

  Boris shifted uncomfortably. Like all, he knew the myths of the Elo-Talern—those creatures hovered over Caeli-Amur like shadows on a wall. The gods had warred and broken the world beneath them in a cataclysm of terrible proportions: the seas boiled, the skies burned, and the earth was torn apart. Seeing this, the grieving Aediles of Caeli-Amur despaired. After Aya was thrown down and the other gods had left the world in grief, the Aediles called out to the universe for a new force to bring order to the city. They spent their nights invoking powerful equations until they summoned the Elo-Talern. Perhaps these creatures had risen from a vast sunless empire deep beneath the ground, or from the Other Side beyond the walls of death, or had descended from the skies. They brought order to the city and with that order came untold horrors that the Aediles had not foreseen. In their sorrow, the Aediles retired from the world and were never seen again. So the myths went.

  Boris had caught half-imagined glimpses of the Elo-Talern’s silhouettes at the Opera, tall and thin, watching from their boxes like decadent princes. All he heard of them were tales of terror. A toothless old man once grabbed Boris by the arm in a liquor hall. “Not two years ago I was a young man. And look at me now. I am only twenty-three years old.” The old man then leaned back and stared into his mug: “The Elo-Talern—they came to me in my sleep and they sucked away my youth.” The old man began to cry.

  The spring air in Caeli-Amur was warm that night, as if the world were gesturing toward a hot summer to follow. The wind whispered through Boris’s open w
indow and caressed his cheek as he sat waiting and thinking at his table. Outside the city was dark; clouds had rolled in, wrapping the sky into one great swathe of darkness. A bottle of hot-wine stood on the wooden table like a lone sentry in the desert. He ran his finger along the fissures and breaks of the wood. When had these cracks appeared? He couldn’t remember. The table was unfixable now, but it had a kind of beauty of its own. Around him, it seemed as if shadowy shapes moved, flickering figures at the edges of his vision. Yet when he turned, they would be gone. Tired, that’s what he was. Tired.

  The sound of three blows to his door startled him. Taking his bolt-thrower from where it leaned against the wall, he wound the lever on its side and listened to the clicking that indicated the internal mechanism was tightening. Holding the bolt-thrower behind him, he walked quietly to the door and quickly pulled it open. A dark shape with hunched shoulders loomed before him.

  “Mathias,” Boris said.

  Neither man moved. To do so would be to start everything again: the raking over history, the recriminations, the disappointments. Behind Mattias stood his wife, Corette, her face and hips broader than he recalled. She had the hard countenance of a woman from the Factory Quarter, her face set against the world. Behind them walked a young man, perhaps seventeen years old, whose dark hair seemed to throw his entire face into dark shadow.

  Eventually, Boris returned to the table and gently placed his bolt-thrower beside the bottle of hot-wine. He sat down.

  Mathias closed the door behind his wife and the young man. “I wasn’t sure if you still lived here.”

  “All the Technis officiates are in this area.”

  “I thought you might have moved closer to the Complex.”

  “I have a view of the sea.”

  “The things you acquire when you’re prepared to compromise.” Mathias stood by the table awkwardly, Corette and the young man observing from a few steps behind. Clearly they were there for support more than to participate in the conversation.