The university was officially autonomous from the Houses; in reality, it was part of their entire structure. In the days before the House Wars, the Classics were studied, but as the Houses’ grip tightened on the city and its institutions, the study of Philosophy, the Histories, the Ancients and Ancient Species, and all their concomitant subjects, had been increasingly replaced by elementary thaumaturgy. Now the university conveyed those with special affinity for the Art from the streets into the Houses.
However, students had started to openly discuss seditionism, to pass banned manuscripts among themselves, to debate history and politics. The university had become a place for not only Houses to recruit, it seemed. Even as the Houses arrested overzealous student seditionists, others took their place.
Deep in the center of the buildings stood a large garden surrounded by cloisters. Violet and amber crystalline orchids from the deserts of Karrak grew in the garden, protected by thaumaturgy. In a corner, Kata dropped her broadsheets. There she had found copies of A Call to Arms, filled mostly with avant-garde seditionist poems and images of the sort found in the little galleries of the Quaedian. The seclusion of the cloisters, their multiple entry points, allowed for secretive meetings and easy escape.
When Kata returned the following day, the broadsheets she had left were gone. For three days, she worked feverishly on a new issue. When it was done, she returned to the university. As she dropped the second bundle in the corner, Kata was aware of a figure shifting quickly behind her. To remain passive was against every instinct the possessed, but she had to play the part of the young seditionist, not a philosopher-assassin. A hand was at her throat quickly, and she was dragged into a nearby alcove.
A woman’s voice in her ear whispered, “It’s dangerous to distribute radical broadsheets.”
“Some things have to be done.”
“An idealist.”
“A realist.”
The hand let go of her throat and she turned. A middle-aged woman with pale blue eyes, her hair closely cropped, stepped back smoothly. “If you keep handing out broadsheets in that pathetic manner one of the Houses will trap you and you will disappear. You’re new at this, aren’t you?”
“No,” said Kata haughtily.
“Would you consider joining another group, one that has been around for many years? One with much experience?” The woman looked out of the alcove. A couple of blue-robed professors deep in debate approached. The woman pressed Kata into the alcove wall, where they remained silent while the professors passed.
“Why would I want to meet your group?” whispered Kata.
“Strength in numbers, for one,” the woman said. “And we can teach you the things we have learned over twenty years.”
Kata baited the woman. “I don’t believe you know so much.”
“We know enough not to drop our broadsheets clumsily in full view.”
“It was hardly full view.”
“And yet here I am.”
Kata allowed a little tentativeness into her voice. “All right, I’d like to meet your group.”
“How many of you are there?”
“I will not say, not until I have seen the size of yours.”
A second later a cloth was over her mouth and she inhaled pungent fumes. She struggled, but her arms were clamped tightly; she kicked out behind her, connected with something and heard a groan. She tried to wriggle from the grasp but the strength had leached from her limbs. Her lungs burned. The cloth slipped away from her face, then clamped once more against her mouth. She tasted blood on the inside of her bottom lip as whiteness rose in front of her eyes. She gave one more struggle; then her legs gave way beneath her.
When Kata came to, she was in the dark. Her neck throbbed where it joined with her skull and her limbs ached. She ran one hand across the cold stone ground, heard the rattle of chains and then her wrist caught—she was bound. Her ankles were shackled also. She found that she could get herself onto her hands and knees, but because her ankles and wrists were chained to each other, she could not stand. She strained to see in the darkness, but could not make out anything. Her heart now leaped as she realized she had no idea where she was. Perhaps one of the other Houses had abducted her and left her to rot in one of their labyrinthine dungeons, before she could reveal herself to them.
Kata again tried to stand, but could only manage a backbreaking crouch. She crawled at an agonizingly slow pace and after a little while gave up.
The hours passed in the cold darkness, and Kata again started to crawl, feeling her way along a wall to her right, which quickly curved around to the left until she felt that she was moving back in the direction from which she had come. Before long she came to a door blocking her way. She passed it by and realized, as the wall curved around again, that she was moving in circles. The only exit was the poorly constructed door, its frame bolted cheaply into the stone, with gaps between the two where she could slide her fingers. There seemed to be no door handle, and the door was fixed fast. Eventually, she lay back on the ground and waited. She was trapped, there was no way out, and now she would have to wait.
More time passed. Darkness hovered around her, and again she wondered if she would die here, on the cold stone floor.
Eventually, she heard sounds and with a flash of light, the door was thrown open. Kata averted her eyes from lamplight, which seemed brilliant after the hours of darkness.
Into the room walked the same middle-aged woman who had trapped her. The woman walked with a low center of gravity, with a tense energy as if she were ready to spring. From her belt hung a dangerous-looking weighted chain. She placed a large leather bag, the kind an apothecary might carry, on the ground. Kata thought about the young apothecary who had first suggested her medicine. Where was he now?
Next to the woman, holding the lamp was a tall blond man with very pale skin: a northerner. He stood extremely still, his head rigid on his neck, his eyes unblinking. He looked like a statue: cold and severe.
“So, a seditionist.” The blond man placed the lamp on the floor. “You’ve made a very poor mistake. How do you enjoy House Arbor’s dungeons?”
Kata looked down at the floor. She had to think: Was she really in House Arbor’s dungeons? If so, she should reveal that she was an agent for House Technis. The Houses were in an uneasy truce since the wars ended five years earlier, and though still enemies of a sort, Technis would negotiate for her release, perhaps organize an exchange of prisoners. But something about the situation made her wonder: the door was so poorly made. Why could she not hear any other prisoners? Perhaps the House kept the prisoners away from each other, the way that Technis was said to do.
“So.” The man kicked her on the arm. “Not talking? Oh, but you will, my little dove. We have a thousand ways to make you talk.” He turned to the woman. “The bottles.”
From a bag the woman took out four bottles, each filled with a differently colored liquid: one red, another blue or perhaps green, a third gray, the last clear.
The northerner picked up the gray bottle. “House Arbor’s newest development —wrigglers. See how they writhe, like little spirals twisting in the water. But once you swallow them, how they move! They twist all through your body, forming little clusters, then they erupt from your skin.”
Kata stared at the bottle. She had heard of wrigglers in the cafés along Via Gracchia. Arbor was well known for its designs and control of plants and animals. Perhaps she should tell them the truth—but not yet, she would wait until the final moment. She was not a woman easily frightened; she had little to live for in the first place.
The northerner uncorked it and sniffed close to the bottle’s neck. “So, my little seditionist. Talk. How many of you are there?”
“An entire city.”
The man laughed a steely laugh. He grabbed Kata by the arm and dragged her through the door and into the darkness. She scrabbled along, trying not to scrape her legs. He turned right, along a rough tunnel into a nearby grotto. On its floor lay a drie
d cadaver, its lips shriveled back over its teeth, its skin sunk into its face as if it were collapsing inward, its arms and legs like the twisted branches of a long dead tree.
“You see.” The man whispered in Kata’s ear. “There’s a seditionist for you. That is the insurgency for you.”
He dragged Kata and tossed her onto the corpse, which crumpled beneath her—just a bag of bones. She rolled onto the stony floor.
“How many of you are there?”
The lantern, now carried by the woman, shone from behind the northerner, gilding him with light, making him appear like some angel of death.
Now Kata burned with anger and obstinacy. She had always had it in her: a stubbornness, an endurance. “An entire city,” she spat out.
“The bottle.” The man took the bottle and pulled back Kata’s hair so that her mouth was facing up. The woman held Kata’s nose and pulled at her jaw as the bottle cracked against her already swollen lips. She struggled and tried to turn her head. She groaned. Eventually, when she took a great breath, the liquid coursed into her mouth and she gulped it down: one, two, three great gulps and then more until the bottle was pulled away from her mouth.
Kata collapsed onto the floor, spitting out the remains of the liquid from her mouth.
“Talk.” The man looked down at her. “Talk and we will give you an antidote which will kill the wrigglers.”
Kata broke into a derisive laugh, her tone full of ridicule and hate. She would never tell these people anything. Memories of Aemilius came to her, memories of growing up on the streets, memories of her mother’s death. What did any of it matter?
Suddenly the man was next to her, and there was a knife cold against her throat. “Don’t you understand? You’re going to die.”
Kata’s felt her emptiness more desperately. Blackness filled her—annihilation. “Kill me then.”
The man sat back. “Very good. You’re not a House agent. You can join our group, if you wish.”
Kata looked up at the man in disbelief. “The wrigglers?”
“What wrigglers?” he held the bottle to the light. Nothing wriggled inside. “You understand why we needed to test you. Josiane will let you out. Meet her at midnight tomorrow at the university. Bring what you need, and anyone you trust absolutely.”
Kata sat grimly in the dirt. She had penetrated a seditionist group.
FOURTEEN
The following night, Kata waited in the alcove with Louis, a young hireling of Technis, a slavish follower of orders whose shifty eyes darted from side to side when he spoke. Louis had the air of a man prepared to do anything to rise to power. He was not cruel, like so many, but rather the reverse: It seemed that at any moment he expected to be the object of some brutishness, and so he was eager to instigate some preemptive misdeed. Right and wrong were not a part of his calculations; rather, to him the world was some morally empty labyrinth. Autec had paired the two, and one did what the officiate decided. Supplicate yourself to those above you, kick those below you, that was the rule of the Houses.
The cloisters were filled with shadows and moonlight. Far away the sound of students drunkenly laughing could be heard. Fops and dilettantes regularly stumbled around the universities at night: high on Numerian weeds and opium, searching for some transcendental or romantic vision; laughing at the strange immanence of the world at night, when things are somehow other, where everything takes on an inner life trying to break through its own form.
“She’s not coming,” said Louis, shifting uneasily on his feet.
“She’s coming.” The shadows moved as the trees in the courtyard rustled in the breeze.
“She’s not,” said Louis.
“She’s listening to us right now,” said Kata.
“Very good,” said a voice from a shadow near the alcove. Josiane approached them. “Stand still,” the woman said. She put hoods over their heads in the manner of the Order of the Sightless, apocalyptics who stumbled through the streets, chained together and blindfolded to symbolize their belief that the world had no sense of its future, that it stumbled blindly through history.
“You understand the need for secrecy.” Josiane tethered them together and pulled them along. Through the night they walked. Kata could not tell exactly where they passed, though clearly it was through the winding routes, through the squares and up the stairs near the cliffs and on toward the peak of the mountain. She heard laughter from passersby, and the occasional gust of wind against her throat.
At a certain point they passed underground and stopped briefly. Kata heard a clicking, and a soft rushing sound, the phht of a wick being lit. They headed on again. The ground became rough and she lost all sense of direction. She started to sweat, and her mouth became dry. Again she was at the mercy of this radical group, who might discover her and Louis to be House agents. Like the philosopher-assassins and agents of the Houses, such seditionists were equally cold to the deaths of others. Politics was not an affair for the virtuous.
Across the rough ground they walked, the air cold. Occasionally Kata struck her shoulder against a wall, rocky and rough. They were probably beneath the city now, near the catacombs perhaps. Behind her, Louis whispered words of encouragement to himself.
She heard the sounds of people moving about, of broken sentences whispered. The smell of burning oil drifted through her hood. She drew in as much air as she could: the place smelled damp.
The hood was whipped off her head and she stood dazzled in a cavernous room that rose like some great ancient church dome. Figures moved around a small kitchen constructed in its center, surrounded by slanted tabletops with buttons and levers and plate glass indicating some long forgotten function. She barely registered her wonder at ancient technology before she focused on the present.
Josiane stood beside a tall and thin man who ran his hands through his curly hair, and eyed them curiously. On the other side of him stood a lithe woman, with a ball of red hair that looked like it was about to burst off her head. No one spoke. To Kata, there was a romance to the scene. The darkness and dinginess, the simplicity of the space, the rough-looking seditionists who worked together—all these befitted a group who spoke of a better world, a more communal world where people lived in harmony, not in competition.
Eventually the man said, “Thanks, Josiane. Take them to Kamron’s room.”
“Kamron is in there.”
“It’s time he was out of there. Tell him to prepare his things. We must be pure, above reproach. Ascetic. There can be no privileges.”
“But Kamron is old,” said the redheaded woman doubtfully. “It would hurt him to sleep on the floor.”
“We cannot have favorites.”
Josiane led Kata and Louis to a side room lit by hundreds of glittering white lights that moved gently across the walls. Again Kata wondered at the ancient technology hidden here beneath the city. She knew that much of the world of the ancients had been ruined, buried, during the cataclysm as the ground itself had broken and shifted, that beneath the world’s crust lay lost wonders. While a ghostly pall hung over the blackened ruins in the communal area, these lights were some of the last working remnants of a former glorious age. Before long, she reasoned, they, too, would run down and join the rest of the skeletal remains.
An older man, his head bowed, shuffled around the room, looking for something. His body was bent and his features slightly skewed—the signs of a life of thaumaturgy. He stopped at a bookshelf, pulled a book from the others, opened it up, flicked through it absentmindedly.
“Kamron,” said Josiane. “You’re being moved to the common room. Collect your possessions later; leave the books, though.”
The old man looked at them as if in puzzlement and said, “Josiane, after everything.”
“History marches on, Kamron, you taught me that. Get out now.”
The old man’s face fell as some internal structure gave way, and he shuffled to the door and out into the central room. The lights changed to a slightly yellow color; perhaps t
hey responded to change, or even emotion. Why someone would design them so was a mystery to Kata.
“Sit down.” Josiane gestured to a couple of chairs. “Maximilian will be with you in a minute.” She left the room.
Louis fidgeted nervously, looking around the room. Kata walked back to the shelves, which stood next to the door. She examined the books: history, philosophy, thaumaturgical tomes and grimoires, including Karlova’s Basics of Thaumaturgical Vision. On the shelf stood copies of Resisting the Unbearable: A Treatise in Morality by Kamron Andrenikis, and Kamron Andrenikis: Selected Shorter Works. As she took in the books, the name Kamron rang in Kata’s ears. Andrenikis was a master pamphleteer; he had composed rapid-fire a hundred and more denunciations of the Houses. But he had done more. He had inaugurated the illegal research of thaumaturgy and argued that control of thaumaturgy was key to the Houses’ hegemony. Could that be the Kamron who had left the room, the broken old man?
As she pulled a book from the shelf, she heard voices from the central cavern. She stepped closer still to the door and listened.
“How do we know they’re not working for the Houses? We’re letting in too many. What does that make now, fifteen? I’m telling you, Maximilian, it will endanger us. We’ll be riddled with agents.” Kata recognized the voice of the redheaded woman.
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