by Matt Wallace
Of course, it has to be this big, Dyeawan supposes.
The room contains the entire Capitol.
The city sprawls out before her, every building, street, and feature perfectly captured to scale in an intricate model. It’s raised on a dais four feet from the floor. The Spectrum must be as tall as Dyeawan, and she can roll freely in her tender among the cooperatives of the Gen Circus. There’s even real water filling a stone pool beyond the port, tiny boats skimming its surface. There must be thousands of miniature wooden people riding the sky carriages, crewing the port, and walking the streets.
It almost looks alive.
Dyeawan is so entranced by the magnificent construction before her that ten minutes pass before she remembers her package. She looks across the model to the other side of the space, then along each side, seeing no one.
“Hello?” she calls out. “Is anyone in here?”
In answer, the section of the model comprising baker’s row and the fabric Division rattles and then splits apart completely, two huge panels containing a half dozen buildings apiece rising like cellar doors. The head that pops up between them belongs to a young woman with short dark hair whose every edge looks like a blade to Dyeawan. She’s wearing a sleeveless tunic with leather belts strapped in an X across the torso, every inch covered in pouches stuffed with tools.
“Oh, do you have my people-mover model?” she asks.
“Um… I hope so?” Dyeawan answers, holding up the wrapped bundle she was given.
“Great! Hold on!”
The woman disappears back down her hole, the two pieces of city slamming shut atop her. Dyeawan can hear the occasional crash and scuffle as she makes her way beneath the model. Thirty seconds later she emerges from under the North Walls, closest to Dyeawan.
“You’re Slider, yeah?” she asks. “I’ve heard about you. I’m Riko. I love this… this…”
“It’s called a tender,” Dyeawan says.
“It’s amazing! Edger’s design?”
“Yes. But Tahei built it. And fixed a few flaws. Don’t tell Edger, though.”
Riko laughs. “You learn quick. I’ve heard that too.”
Dyeawan doesn’t know what to say to that, so she reaches down and offers Riko her bundle.
The young woman takes it and unties it, excited. She unwraps a small, polished wooden box with a metal latch.
When Riko opens the lid, Dyeawan isn’t sure what they’re looking at. Riko removes a rectangular object that appears to be two strips of cloth wrapped side-by-side around a wooden block. There’s a barrier composed of steel posts and string between the two strips.
“What is it?” Dyeawan asks.
Riko grins. “I’ll show you!”
She disappears back under the model, object in-hand. When Riko emerges again she’s opened a panel right next to the Spectrum. As Dyeawan looks on, Riko opens the entire front of the building like a cabinet. Not only is the outside of the model a perfect rendering of the Capitol, the interiors appear to be identical in every detail too. Riko removes the first level of the Spectrum as one would a drawer.
“It’s an idea I had that Edger approved for a proper test,” Riko explains. “You see, the corridors in the Spectrum are the longest of any structure in the Capitol. It’s been reported this leads to a congestion of foot traffic and both officiates and petitioners being late to appointments.”
Riko waves a hand over the corridor in question. It runs almost the entire length of the section she’s removed. She takes a slim tool from one of her pouches and begins popping up small pieces of the floor in the middle of the corridor, setting them aside.
“So, my idea is to use the method of counter-tension. It came to me when I dislocated my shoulder a few months ago and the surgeon had to use a bed sheet to pop it back in.”
Riko replaces the flooring she’s removed with her cloth-wrapped rectangle, fitting it perfectly into the section of the model. She snatches up two of the nearest wooden people miniatures and places one each at opposite ends of the cloth strips, on opposing sides. She begins to move one miniature down the right-hand cloth strip while she moves the other one toward it down the left-hand strip.
“You see, as people walk down one length here, they move the belt underfoot. The motion pulls the opposite belt in the other direction. So as people on that belt walk the other way, they’re feeding the momentum of each side, moving both belts faster and faster and carrying the people along at greatly increased speed.”
Riko demonstrates by striking the bottoms of the people miniatures across the strips repeatedly and then taking the miniatures away. The strips continue to move on their own, revolving around the new section of floor in opposite directions.
“I estimate it’ll speed up foot traffic by half its ordinary volume, at least on busy days,” Riko proclaims, beaming.
Dyeawan is astonished. She looks at the older woman in genuine awe.
“That’s… it’s as amazing as my tender. You’re brilliant.”
Riko’s face visibly flushes, and she seems to retreat inward from the enthusiasm she wore openly just a moment before.
“It’s a simple design, really. Edger has designed the most spectacular inventions in the history of Crache, which means in the world.”
“I won’t tell him,” Dyeawan assures her.
Riko grins. “I’m glad you like it. I hope everyone else agrees.”
“I’m sure they will. So… this model… it’s not just a model.”
“Oh no. It’s the city, just smaller and quieter. It’s how we test all our ideas and designs before moving to the next stage, which is building them full-scale.”
“How do you test those?”
Riko points to the closed-off archway behind her on the other side of the space, then to the one at her right.
“We have bigger pieces of the city built to scale on the rest of the level.”
Dyeawan can scarcely believe it; even after the days she’s spent flying through the corridors of this place.
“That’s… I can’t… will you show me? Please?”
Riko beams at her again. “I’d love to.”
As she disappears beneath the Capitol once more, Dyeawan finds her gaze drawn to the forgotten corners of the city she once occupied in fear and isolation every day of her life. She can even see the finished ship hulls she spoke of to Edger. They’re perfectly re-created in miniature form, stacked neatly beside one another just off the port and covered in swatches of tarp.
For the first time since waking up in the Planning Cadre, Dyeawan looks past the wonders of their inventions and imaginations. She looks past the marvels of Crachian technology and innovation those things yield. She looks past it all and asks herself a very simple question.
If they can create all this, why are there still people like her left to rot in the streets only to be swept away by Aegins to who knows where?
It’s a question she’d very much like to ask Edger, but she doesn’t, not out of fear, but out of certainty.
She knows whatever he tells her would be a lie, even if he believes it.
STEEL FIELDS OF RUST AND ROT
THEY MOVE EVIE AND THE others out the morning after seeding them with blood coins. There are no chains, and no armored soldiers of the Skrain ride out with them. They merely shepherd Evie and her newly marked Savage peers onto plain wagons without cages and point the caravan north from the Capitol along a largely disused road that winds through mostly rough country.
A few days later, Evie watches the Fourth City rise far in the distance off the caravan’s right. It remains far in the distance until it disappears entirely behind them before dusk. It is clear to her then that they will avoid major cities, even smaller towns, as much as possible on their journey to wherever.
That part she still hasn’t been able to discern, but a week later and with no end to the road in sight, she’s beginning to suspect they’ll travel far beyond everything she or the others know of Crache.
Th
e Savage Legion keeps a cold camp, serving their new brothers and sisters dried and salted fish atop rice that tastes as though it were cooked three days before. They all finish their small cups quickly and take to their bed rolls early, most of them still finding their only solace in the hours they’re given to sleep, even if they do so while shivering against the biting frost.
Evie has never cared for the little death of sleep.
She finds Laython squatting in the bushes on the perimeter of their sparse camp. He’s flipping through wood block tiles carved with various physically improbable images of fornication and other debauchery.
“What do you want now, Savage?” he asks her without looking up from his literary pursuit. “Complaints about the food? Questions about your sleeping conditions? Wagon too bumpy during the day?”
“When are we issued our weapons?”
“ ‘Issued our weapons,’ she says,” he mocks her. “That is mighty fancy talk from vagrant scum Aegins scraped off a barroom floor.”
Evie quickly bites her lower lip, feeling caught off-guard. She knows she has only a brief second to dismiss that observation before he looks up at her and really starts to think about it.
“I’m a fellow reader,” she manages. “That’s a classic, you’ve got there.”
Laython grunts in mild approval. “You can draw gear and weapons whenever you want, from the armorist’s wagon. Ask around for Spud-Bar.”
“Thank you,” Evie says quickly.
“Thank me by letting me shit in peace.”
She finds the armorist’s wagon on the opposite edge of camp. It looks like a conveyance adorned for some kind of demolition contest; every inch of its exterior is covered in jagged, rusty blades and spiked pieces of wood, steel, and iron. Swords and daggers dangle from hooks. Axes fill racks and spears fill baskets bolted to the wagon’s hide. Shields are piled high in rows on its roof, in between bundles of longer pikes and horse-cutters, and netting filled with mixed pieces of armor bulge over the sides.
Peering within the wagon, Evie sees a rugged but obviously skilled makeshift smithy shop. There are several anvils, large vise grips, and cutting and sharpening tools.
And, of course, dozens of more bundles of secondhand weapons.
The armorist is nowhere to be found, at least that Evie can see. Standing outside the wagon, she grabs the first short sword she spies and quickly discards it like the trash it is. She rifles through several more swords, chucking them aside each time. She snaps the blade of one in half over her knee, dropping the separated pieces in sheer disgust.
Evie finally retrieves a short ax that doesn’t immediately raise any warnings as she examines it. There are no chips in the blade’s edge, nor any cracks in its surface.
“You know steel,” a deep voice says, and it’s not a question.
Evie turns, ax in hand, having to adjust her gaze upward several feet to meet the speaker’s eyes. They’re tall and broad with a plain stony face.
“Spud-Bar?” Evie asks. “The armorist?”
“Yes.”
Evie observes two things right away, the first being there isn’t a single raised rune in Spud-Bar’s flesh; no one’s forced a coin down that particular gullet. The second thing she observes is that Spud-Bar is an Undeclared. In addition to their size and androgynous features, they’ve shaved the sides of their head in popular Undeclared fashion, gathering the hair that remains into a topknot.
Evie holds up the ax. “I didn’t mean to presume—”
“You know steel,” Spud-Bar repeats. “That’s rare in the types they send us, particularly the new ones. Most of ’em don’t know a good knife even if they’ve used one to stab a bartender to death.”
“I… I’ve never stabbed a bartender, that I can recall.”
“Soldier, then?”
Evie quickly shakes her head. “I haven’t had any training. But I’m not blind, either. I can see rust and rot as well as anyone.”
Spud-Bar is obviously skeptical, but they don’t press the issue. “That’s a good piece, the ax. It’s a B’ors design, B’ors-made. Which you wouldn’t know, not having ’ad any training and all.”
Evie can’t help but grin. “Right. It’s got a good balance.”
“Also rare among this lot, I’m afraid. But I take what I’m given and do m’best with it. That’s all any of us here can do. The good news is, odds are fair you’ll only need it for one battle.”
“Is that the average life around here? One battle?”
“That’s slightly above the average.”
That news settles like a great granite slab on Evie’s chest. She does her best not to let it show.
“A lot of these people don’t look like they belong here, even for one battle,” Evie observes.
Spud-Bar shrugs. “There are many reasons to ‘belong’ here.”
“I had a friend,” Evie ventures, carefully. “We were… separated. Is it possible you’ve seen him? A handsome man, my age, dark hair, dark eyes.”
“This is someone you know or someone you dream about knowing?”
Evie curses herself silently. “It’s a poor description, I know. But—”
“I don’t look too hard at the new ones, you know? No offense, but you may be dead tomorrow. It doesn’t pay to make lasting friends.”
“Right. Of course. Can I use your tools to work on this?” she asks, holding up the ax again.
“Is bladesmithing something else you’ve had no training in?”
Evie shrugs. “I tinker.”
Now it’s Spud-Bar’s turn to grin. “You tinker.”
Evie nods.
“What’s mine is at your disposal, Savage,” Spud-Bar says.
Her expression darkens. “My name is Evie.”
Spud-Bar doesn’t respond to that at first. They’re staring down at Evie quizzically, as if genuinely not quite sure what to make of her.
“Of course it is,” they finally say, bowing in a formal greeting. “Evie.”
Evie returns the bow. “Spud-Bar.”
The armorist laughs. “It’s a nickname. I’ve learned to like it.”
“May I ask you a question that’s not about steel?”
Spud-Bar’s laughter fades, and they look down at Evie with renewed skepticism in their eyes.
“You may, though I won’t guarantee any good answer. I stick to my trade, mostly.”
“Fair. What happens when this wagon train stops?”
Spud-Bar begins picking up the blades discarded by Evie, dumping them in a basket containing similarly distressed and broken weapons. The task seems almost like a brief escape from answering Evie’s question.
When they finally do, there’s nothing cordial in Spud-Bar’s voice as there was a moment before.
“We’ll have reached the Sicclunan front line. You and the rest of this raw meat, none of whom I imagine are lucky enough to not have the training you say you don’t, will join up with the surviving Savages from other companies.”
“And then what?”
Spud-Bar reaches between them and gently flicks the edge of the ax in Evie’s hand with their fingertips.
“You’ll need that ax to be in as fit shape as possible.”
RESOLVE IS THE FORGED BLADE THAT CANNOT BE QUENCHED
“IF THAT TALKING SADDLEBAG THINKS he can call my husband a traitor, fold my Gen, and pay me off like a whore, his mind is as molten as his face!”
Lexi has been raging for three blocks, since they left the Spectrum. Her every step seems to pump pure fire through the rest of her body, leading to reoccurring eruptions between her ears.
Taru hasn’t said a word. They’ve rarely seen Lexi so fiercely dispossessed of composure.
“And that self-righteous ideologue using her backside’s spout as her mouth,” she thunders on. “If she weren’t wearing those robes she’d be scrubbing the Spectrum’s stone hide every morning.”
Taru frowns, offering comment for the first time. “From what you’ve described, Te-Gen, Councilwoma
n Burr was thoroughly unsympathetic and even unnecessarily aggressive when addressing the issue, and you in particular.”
“She’s an Ignoble,” Lexi says, as if that one word is explanation enough.
“I’m afraid I… am unfamiliar with that term, Te-Gen. I was taught all forms of ‘nobility’ in Crache were overturned long ago. We have no nobles, of any kind.”
“And so they were, and so we do not. Ignobles are the descendants of those ancient houses whose powers were revoked and wealth reallocated during the Renewal, when smarter folk than Burr finally realized how destructive it was, allowing themselves to be ruled by men based solely on whose crotch they were pulled from at birth. Burr’s family was one of the richest and most powerful in Crache before that time. They commanded their own armies. For all I know the Spectrum is built on land where their great castle once stood.”
“But that was… hundreds of years ago. How could she possibly know, yet prove—”
Lexi laughs wryly. “Ignobles became even more fanatical about preserving and cataloguing their bloodlines after the Renewal. They were all certain it wouldn’t last; that the great houses would rise up and take back the realms that became Crache. They all wanted their claims to what their ancestors’ lost clear as a morning stream.”
“Councilwoman Burr seems to have adapted well enough,” Taru observes. “She speaks the words of the state with vigor.”
“Her family has learned to play a new game. If they couldn’t make themselves useful, they could decide the usefulness of others. I believe she’s the third Burr to serve on the Gen Franchise Council.”
Taru is genuinely taken aback. “But inheriting title or position is forbidden—”
“The Renewal did many fine things,” Lexi says impatiently. “It allowed common families to come together to form Gens. It replaced houses of overfed, underqualified nobles with those Gens. It did not, however, eradicate hypocrisy.”
The thoroughfares of the Capitol are narrow, clean, and almost completely free of foot traffic, even at the height of the afternoon in the center of the largest city in the nation. Their streets are the same smooth, waning-moon-colored stone of the Capitol buildings. The sun’s rays find not a single chip or scratch in the pavement, and it’s said the Capitol streets can never be stained, not even by blood.