3

The deployment – or whatever pageantry that passed for it – concluded in half an hour. Sam had declared in three separate documents that the amblers were of satisfactory quality, and then watched them shuffle to their workstations under the guidance of eleven supervisors. The perennial banging of machinery gave her a migraine.

The preservers lingered in the overseer’s office, reading broadsheets. They were polite when Sam took her leave, but not polite enough to let her borrow the palanquin. The overseer offered her a perch on the work bus that the supervisors rode it to and from their shifts.

A row of rusty benches sat at the conjunction of four factories. A schedule declared that the next bus would embark in two and a half hours. The “busses” sat under a sheetsteel hut. Their pullers – four amblers per open-air cabin – stood inanimate, chained to their harnesses. They wore emerald-on-gold jogging shorts, exposing piston-like calves knotted with steel fibre.

Sam sat on a bench and stared at the ceiling. Supervisors patrolled the catwalks, pointing this way and that. They stood out with their iron-tipped whips and yellow-lined jackets – standardized stimuli for micromanagement. One day, when she had her own amblers, she would send them here, and ask her own apprentice to check them once in a while, to make sure things are running smoothly. She would check the cashflow from a café on the Floor of Twenty, maybe twice a week.

What a life that would be.

A steam engine stopped across the road. Two apprentices stepped out, each carrying identical briefcases embroidered with cartoon skeletons (seen here wearing spectacles and reading books). Their plague masks glittered with orange dust, freshly sprayed; their coats were black wool, orange trimmed.

The engine groaned. The fattest man Sam has ever seen landed on the road. He had a mop of yellow hair and eyes hidden behind blackout goggles. His oversized coat was thick with copper embroidery, his boots jingling with silver chains. He wobbled as his feet struck on the ground, and the apprentices caught him by the folds of his arms.

A skeleton of a man followed him. His cheekbones were sunken, his eyes two gaping pits, his trenchcoat hugging his frame like a corset. Sam met his eyes – two emotionless pits. He called out to the apprentices. One went to him. A silent argument ensued. The apprentice slumped his shoulders.

Sam suddenly wished that she had walked.

The apprentice remained behind while his colleagues disappeared into the same factory Sam had just left. He sat down on the other end of her bench. Sam recognized him. Burn them, he had said.

They sat in silence for a while. The steam engine hiccupped as its boiler cooled. In a world of abundant labour, engines were a bizarre amalgam of innovation and antiquity – amblers could pull carriages faster and cheaper, so what were they good for?

“Robert told me to kill you,” said the apprentice.

Sam digested that for a while. “Who’s Robert?”

“Robert Finley, my sponsor. I told him you are from the House of Dawn. We’ve met before.”

“I remember.”

“He told me to sit with you instead, to make sure you don’t go anywhere, and to use my charms.”

“Charms? Like what?”

“My charms. Like my easy-going personality.”

“Was that a joke?”

“No. Sort of. I don’t know. Sorry about the other day. I was in a bad place. Was on the palisade.”

“You told me.”

“They rushed at us empty-handed. We were to talk them out of it. Talk. We were turning them into merchandize.”

“Did you?”

“I broke my arm. One of them bit me. The amblers beat him and I got caught in it. Only found out after we got back from…”

“Sorry. I broke my hand too.”

“You weren’t there. They kept coming at the barricade. They all had holes on them, when we raised them. I saw the biting guy, later, going to Branch Three. He’d lost his teeth. Bit something else. Teeth are important for aesthetics. Prop up your cheeks. Makes a nice face. Higher value.”

“How high?”

“Twenty percent. That all you care about? How much money you are going to make?’

“Gets me through the day.”

“What?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was supposed to ask you that. You don’t usually come here.”

“How do you know where I usually go?”

“Because I’m here every week.”

“Every week? Why?”

“I – just doing my job. Living my life.”

“Are you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, just asking.”

“I do what I’m told to do, then I go home and have a shower, then I crash and wake up and do it all over again, eight to nine.”

“Ten to twelve.”

“You got weekends?”

“Sometimes. Maestro Cowen is very busy.”

“They are all very busy. All of them, always working, I don’t know on what. And we are just sitting here.”

“Doing our jobs.”

“You would call this busy then?”

“Yep.”

They shared a quiet laugh.

“You should…probably start walking,” said the apprentice. “Robert might change his mind.”

“It’s forty miles to the Pillar.”

The apprentice fished around in his pockets and came up with a Command Ring. It was thin, flimsy, and inset with a tourmaline chit. He held it out.

“I can’t take company property,” said Sam.

“It’s mine. My family’s. My…birth family’s. It’s on this Floor somewhere – the three-sevens, I think. It’s not great, but it can carry you and run.”

“Am I running for my life?”

“I…I don’t know. I don’t think so. They wouldn’t want to upset Maestro Cowen.”

“Then thank you for your offer, but I’ll be fine.” Sam looked at him. The apprentice had rust-red hair and a square face. There was a faint scar around his neck. “Sorry about…not helping you.”

“I shouldn’t have asked. It was my sector.”

“Next time I’ll…I’ll…”

“You probably won’t.”

They laughed again, quietly. He did not ask for her name. Sam did not ask for his. It seemed easier this way. Impersonal.